OpenAI DevDay 2026 - Connecting the Dots… Days Later
OpenAI DevDay 2026 was quite the spectacle. Things kicked off with a protest outside the venue entrance, followed by food served under canopies that were dripping water onto our heads, multiple live demo fails, and a lot of showboating. My favorite was the French head of developer experience entering the keynote wearing the viral Macron-style aviator sunglasses.
An attendee told me last year's sessions were more technical. Another told me the food was much better in the past. Not having been to previous editions, I can't say for sure. But one thing that I can say for certain is that the OpenAI team rushed to pull everything together for this event. Do demos usually fail during OpenAI DevDay? I was too afraid to ask...
When AI is not doing what I want, I also write "go build it"
Throughout the day, I was trying to get my hands on the freshly announced features. I was at the game-making breakout session struggling to use the Cloud agent. At another point, I tried controlling the agent remotely from my phone, and it threw me into a never-ending loop of scanning a QR code on my laptop to no avail. Ironically, Dots were to be found everywhere (all over the walls, a giant clock, stickers, even Dippin' Dots ice cream), everywhere but my computer. In the end, I was able to get the Cloud agent to work somewhat. I had to sign up for the mobile beta to fix whatever was broken with Codex Remote. And I found Dots on my account days later...
Sol 6.1, which was another big DevDay announcement, reached my account after DevDay, and it has actually become my go-to coding model. In a recent TIME interview, Sam Altman conceded that they had faltered in the past year, and that they should've been focusing on the models more. I think we all agree with that sentiment.
Almost none of the things they announced were available on DevDay. Will they learn from this and not try to release everything everywhere all at once during the release announcement? Or at least pre-record their demos? Or could they just skip announcing features during DevDay and have engineer-focused workshops instead? It'll be interesting to see what they do next year...
Some funny moments:
- The moderator of the Closing Q&A tried so hard to not let the audience ask questions live, only to be thwarted by Thibault Sottiaux running around with a mic
- Apparently their internal Dot warned them that the demos would fail, which ironically would have been a cool demo to make
- The bartenders were basically serving straight shots, not cocktails