GeekWire Podcast on location at OpenAI in Bellevue, with CTO of Applications Vijaye Raji
OpenAI recently opened its largest office outside of San Francisco, in downtown Bellevue, Wash., and we were there for the grand opening to tour the space, check out the vibe, and record this week’s GeekWire Podcast.
Chatting inside the OpenAI game room, we share what we’ve seen about the Mad Men-meets-Pacific Northwest aesthetic — which includes open floor plans and a variety of similar spaces — and try to figure out what it all says about the OpenAI culture.
Also, an interview with Vijaye Raji, former CEO of Statsig and now CTO of OpenAI for applications, about Codex, infrastructure, employment, and the emergence and growth of Silicon Valley tech giants in the region.
In our final installment, the GeekWire trivia challenge returns, with a question focusing on one of the early tech giants to establish an army in the Seattle area.
‘It’s hard to imagine going back’
One of the most interesting moments in the interview with Raji came when he explained how OpenAI’s Codex tool changed his day-to-day work, to the point where he was making software for himself again, or at least inspiring software to make software.
“Codex made coding more fun,” says Raji. “I’m back coding.”
He explained the new daily rhythm: “Before you enter the meeting, you ask him to do a set of tasks, then you jump into the meeting, when you come back, you are done, and then you review it,” he said. “Very good.”
Internally, Raji said teams using Codex are seeing 2-3x productivity gains in terms of code output. Outside of engineering, the tool has found its way into marketing, sales, and operations.
“It is very difficult for me to think that we are going back to the way we used to write codes,” he said. “It’s definitely changed.”
OpenAI’s Codex, which got a Windows version this week, is part of an explosion of AI coding tools including GitHub Copilot (Microsoft), Amazon Q Developer, Google’s Gemini Code Assist, Anthropic’s Claude Code and others, all of which promise significant productivity gains.
A template for other OpenAI offices
As for the Bellevue office, Raji sees it as a potential model for expanding OpenAI elsewhere. Proximity to the San Francisco headquarters, a shared time zone, a short distance from OpenAI partners Microsoft and Amazon, and the depth of local infrastructure talent make it a worthy experiment.
“If we can make Seattle more successful, we can take that formula and apply it to more offices,” he said.
OpenAI currently has 250 employees in Bellevue, with room to grow to 1,400. The office has teams working on infrastructure, ChatGPT, research, marketing, and collaboration.
Raji will be speaking at GeekWire’s AI eventAgents of Transformation, March 24. More information and tickets.
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Related entries: Inside OpenAI’s new Bellevue office: A hard-hitting statement about the impact of AI in the Seattle region
Sound editing by Curt Milton.
