Redo it with AI? An alternative to OpenAI's GitHub developed to compete with Microsoft

To address frequent outages, OpenAI is developing an alternative to Microsoft’s GitHub.

According to the latest report from The Information, OpenAI is working on a code repository product as an internal substitute for Microsoft GitHub, which may evolve into a market-facing commercial product.

Sources familiar with the matter say the project is currently in its early stages and may take several months to complete. Employees involved in the project have discussed the possibility of selling access to the code repository to OpenAI customers.

If OpenAI decides to launch this product commercially, it would be the latest example of the company directly competing with its largest shareholder, Microsoft. Currently, Microsoft’s GitHub dominates the field of code storage, sharing, and collaboration for software engineers.

Frequent outages drive the development of internal alternatives

OpenAI’s decision to launch this new product stems directly from recent poor experiences reported by its engineers. According to two insiders who have worked at large client companies that experienced outages, like other GitHub users, OpenAI engineers have seen an increase in GitHub outages over the past few months.

These service disruptions have directly impacted research and development efficiency. Outages prevent engineers from making code changes or collaborating, with downtime ranging from minutes to hours. To reduce reliance on Microsoft GitHub and ensure continuous R&D, OpenAI has started building its own code repository.

From a market perspective, this new project has significant commercial potential. If OpenAI combines its code repository product with its Codex coding agent, it could create a powerful development toolchain.

Codex can automate tasks such as building functions and debugging code. For developers who want to collaborate with both AI agents and humans on coding projects, this integrated solution—combining a foundational code repository with advanced AI agents—will be highly attractive.

New challenges in the competitive relationship

OpenAI maintains a large and mutually beneficial partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft is not only a major investor in OpenAI but also leverages OpenAI’s models to power innovative AI coding tools in GitHub. These tools can automatically complete code as developers write and handle complex tasks like rewriting code in different languages.

However, the overlap between their businesses is increasing. For example, OpenAI has developed ChatGPT features that allow users to collaborate on documents, create, and edit presentations, similar to Microsoft Office applications. If OpenAI ultimately decides to publicly sell its code repository product, it could intensify competition within the developer ecosystem. Nonetheless, insiders also suggest that OpenAI might choose not to release the product publicly and keep it for internal use only.

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