OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar discussed artificial intelligence hiring practices and infrastructure constraints at the Liquidity Summit 2026.
Friar stated, "I would never hire a finance person who didn't know how to use Excel, and I probably wouldn't hire a finance person today that doesn't know how to use a tool like Codex." OpenAI's Codex is an AI coding agent designed to automate software and technical tasks using natural-language prompts. A Deloitte survey of over 1,300 finance leaders identified AI and automation skills as a top priority for talent development.
Codex has more than 5 million weekly active users, an increase of more than sixfold since the desktop application launched in February. A company report indicates that knowledge workers account for approximately 20 percent of users, and their adoption of the tool is growing more than three times faster than other user groups, though software developers remain the largest user group.
The company introduced plugin support for Codex in March and has since released six new plug-ins targeting data analytics, creative production, sales, product design, equity investing, and investment banking. It also introduced a Sites feature, which allows the platform to output work as a hosted interactive website. It partners with Wix, Base44, Replit, Lovable, Figma, and Emergent to support this feature. Additionally, an Annotations feature allows users to designate specific sections of documents or files within the platform.
Friar also addressed the scarcity of computing power. "Compute is a very scarce resource at the moment," she said. She noted that limitations stem from factors including energy supply, land availability, permitting speed, memory production, talent pipelines, and community relationships. Friar added that despite mitigation efforts, compute shortages were expected to persist into 2026.