OpenAI accelerates support for Australian founders with ‘Startups Week’
OpenAI’s global startups team will be on the ground in Australia next week for a series of workshops, builder lounges and technical sessions aimed at helping local tech founders build and scale with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The program, dubbed OpenAI Startups Week, will run from 16–20 March, 2026.
Kicking off at Adelaide’s Southstart Festival, the week will bring together venture capital firms, startup founders and AI builders for hands-on sessions exploring the latest capabilities across the OpenAI platform. Events will be hosted alongside partners including Square Peg, Side Stage Ventures, Relevance AI and innovation hub Stone & Chalk.
Founders attending the sessions will get early exposure to new tools and capabilities, including OpenAI’s latest frontier models, multimodal updates and Codex, the company’s agentic coding tool designed to support multi-agent development workflows.
Thomas Jeng (pictured), OpenAI’s VC Partnerships Lead for APAC, said the sessions are designed to give founders practical guidance on building AI-native companies and scaling with AI.
“OpenAI Startups Week is about getting builders hands-on with the technology,” Jeng said. “We’ll be running technical deep dives on everything from API implementation and scaling AI-native products to cost optimisation and building reliable AI workflows.”
“Australia is already a top-10 market globally for developers building on OpenAI’s platform. With the rise of agentic coding tools like Codex, we’re seeing more local founders shipping products faster and creating entirely new categories of AI-native software.”
Australia has long punched above its weight in global tech. The country produces more billion-dollar startups per venture capital dollar than almost anywhere in the world, and Australian founders are increasingly applying that same ingenuity to building AI-first products and services.
The program comes as OpenAI’s Codex app gains rapid traction in Australia, with usage more than doubling in the month since launch. Designed as a command centre for agentic software development, Codex allows coding agents to operate in parallel across multiple projects, enabling teams to complete complex development tasks significantly faster.
The surge in adoption coincides with OpenAI’s broader push to close what it calls Australia’s “AI capability gap.” Internal data shows the top 5 per cent of power users leverage around eight times more advanced reasoning and coding capability than the median user, highlighting the productivity gains available as more developers and founders build advanced AI skills.
Jacky Koh, Co-CEO and Founder of Relevance AI, whose team is co-hosting one of the Sydney builder sessions, said the week offers founders a rare opportunity to learn directly from the teams building the frontier of AI.
“As a startup that has grown by building on OpenAI’s technology, we’re thrilled to co-host a session with the OpenAI team to give builders hands-on access to new tools and live demos. We’ll also be showcasing the launch of Relevance AI’s Programmatic GTM, developer tooling for GTM engineers looking to build and deploy teams of AI agents. Founders can expect practical guidance, real examples, and a behind-the-scenes look at how startups are building AI-native products today.”
Chris Kirk, CEO of Stone & Chalk, said, “Stone & Chalk exists to help ambitious founders access the networks, tools and expertise they need to build globally competitive companies. By hosting OpenAI’s Startups team in Adelaide and Sydney, we’re giving founders direct, hands-on access to the people and tools behind the technology shaping the next generation of AI-native companies.
“These are not hype sessions – they’re builder-focused workshops where founders can see what’s possible today: solo founders shipping products at speeds that used to require ten-person teams, and startups creating solutions that corporates are still only piloting. It’s a rare chance to witness the velocity and ingenuity of Australia’s AI-native founders in action, and to help them build smarter, faster and globally.”
OpenAI Startups Week Schedule:
[Adelaide – Southstart Festival]
- 17th March: Thomas Jeng, OpenAI’s VC Partnerships Lead, APAC, to host afternoon Builder Lounge event with Stone & Chalk (Time: 2.00pm to 5.30pm).
[Sydney]
- 18th March:OpenAI startups team and Relevance AI to host AI Builder Session at Relevance AI’s Sydney headquarters.
- 19th March: Thomas Jeng, OpenAI’s VC Partnerships Lead, APAC,will co-host a workshop with Square Peg for startup founders and builders on optimising multi-agent workflows and explore what’s new with Codex.
- 19th March: Thomas Jeng, OpenAI’s VC Partnerships Lead, APAC to host an afternoon Builder Lounge event at Stone & Chalk’s Tech Central Innovation Hub. The event will explore multimodal updates, Codex, where the platform is heading, and include a technical deep dive and live Q&A (Time: 2.30pm to 5.30pm).
- 20th March: Thomas Jeng, OpenAI’s VC Partnerships Lead, APAC to host a breakfast with founders in collaboration with key.ai.
