OpenAI (Unlisted:OPAI) announced on Thursday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Astral, a startup known for its open source tools for Python developers.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Astral’s team will join OpenAI to support the development of Codex, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence coding assistant.
The acquisition is intended to expand Codex’s capabilities beyond code generation, enabling AI to assist across the full software development workflow, including planning changes, modifying codebases, running tools, and maintaining software over time.
Astral has developed several widely used Python tools, including uv, which simplifies dependency and environment management; Ruff, a fast linter and formatter; and ty, which helps enforce type safety.
Thibault Sottiaux, Codex lead at OpenAI, noted that Astral’s tools are used by millions of Python developers.
“By bringing their expertise and ecosystem to OpenAI, we’re accelerating our vision for Codex as the agent most capable of working across the entire software developer lifecycle,” Sottiaux said.
Charlie Marsh, Astral CEO, said the company will continue evolving its open source tools as part of OpenAI.
“Astral has always focused on building tools that transform how developers work with Python—helping them ship better software, faster,” Marsh said. “As part of Codex, we’ll continue evolving our open source tools to push the frontier of software development.”
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval. Until then, OpenAI and Astral will operate independently. Once completed, the Astral team will join OpenAI, contributing to the growth of Codex and its integration with Python developer workflows.