OpenAI says its hardware team used GPT-6 Astra to design a device that lets users talk to the Codex coding agent, completing the work as a side project in under a week. The model contributed to the enclosure, circuit-board layout and component selection, as well as the firmware and user interface.
A contract manufacturer produced a small batch of prototypes in less than a month. The design needed several revision rounds because Astra did not always account for manufacturing constraints, tolerances and assembly requirements.
OpenAI also reported results for a newer, unnamed internal model on the BenchCAD 2.0 benchmark. It scored 0.875, compared with 0.594 for GPT-6 Astra at its highest reasoning level. The benchmark evaluates models on reconstructing 3D parts and assemblies and identifying connections on circuit boards. OpenAI has not shared further details about the internal model.
The company says its hardware teams use Codex and ChatGPT for CAD models, manufacturing drawings and simulations in areas including robotics and compute infrastructure. Token usage for these tasks has grown 23-fold since February. OpenAI is also developing its own hardware device, described in the source report as reportedly falling somewhere between an AI speaker and a smartphone.
Sources: The Decoder.