The Codex Table x OpenAI — Vietnam’s Most Exclusive AI Founders Brunch

A small room. A sharp table. A big signal for Vietnam’s AI builders.

The Codex Table brought together a curated room of 40+ Vietnam’s AI founders, builders, and enterprise leaders for a closed-door brunch with the OpenAI team.

Hosted by GenAI Fund together with OpenAI, the session was designed to be smaller, sharper, and more direct than a public meetup. One seat per company. One room. One table. A morning built for real conversations between the people building AI products, the teams supporting the tools behind them, and the enterprise leaders looking for what can be deployed next.

Joining us from OpenAI were: Thomas Jeng — APAC Startup Lead and Tyler Ryu — AI Deployment Engineer, Codex. A huge thank you to the OpenAI team for collaborating with us and staying engaged throughout the session. We are also grateful to Roy Nguyen for helping us secure such a nice and cozy space at Zumwhere, which gave the morning exactly the right setting: focused, candid, and founder-first.

OpenAI in the room

The morning opened with a welcome from GenAI Fund and OpenAI before moving into a sharing session led by Thomas, and Tyler. The OpenAI team shared what they are seeing across startup ecosystems, what is changing in AI product development, and what they are watching closely in Southeast Asia.

What made the session valuable was not just the update from OpenAI, but the direct exchange that followed. The audience engaged quickly, asking questions about technical topics, product implementation, agentic workflows, Codex, deployment challenges, and how startups should think about building with AI tools that are moving fast.

Tyler also ran a quick live demo of what Codex can do, including creating PPTX slides and building a website in minutes with simple prompts. It gave the room a clear look at how fast AI-assisted building workflows are becoming, especially for founders moving from idea to prototype quickly.

OpenAI also gave every participant a “small” perk to keep building after the brunch: $250 in API credits plus ChatGPT Pro for three months.

Around the Table

After the OpenAI sharing, the room moved into the core format of The Codex Table: Around the Table.

Each participant had a chance to introduce themselves, share what they were building, explain the problem they were working on, and talk about how AI sits at the center of their product or work. The format gave everyone in the room enough space to be heard, while keeping the discussion practical and founder-led.

The range of builders made the session especially strong. Around the table were founders and operators working on agent infrastructure, AI media tools, robotics, AI-powered customer support, payments for AI agents, security tooling, enterprise automation, fintech infrastructure, gaming, content, and more.

That mix is what made The Codex Table different. Founders were not only meeting other founders; they were speaking directly with technical experts, ecosystem partners, and decision-makers who are actively looking at how AI can be adopted inside larger organizations.

Why this room mattered

The Codex Table was built around a simple idea: Vietnam has one of the most exciting pools of AI builders in Southeast Asia, and the most useful conversations often happen when the room is small enough for everyone to actually talk.

Instead of a big-stage format, this was a seated brunch where the conversations could go deeper. Founders could compare notes with other teams building in adjacent categories. Enterprise leaders could see what is being built locally, not just what is being announced globally. And the OpenAI team could hear directly from the builders using these tools in real products, with real constraints, in a fast-moving market.

The conversations that start here do not end at the table. That was the point.

A kickoff toward Agentic AI Build Week

The Codex Table was also the opening move toward something much larger: Agentic AI Build Week, happening from July 8 to July 12, 2026. During the brunch, we shared more about GenAI Fund’s week-long series of events, workshops, and build sessions for AI founders, builders, investors, and corporate leaders across the region, with Vietnam as the central point — and invited the founders in the room to help shape what comes next, from bringing a community and running a session to mentoring builders, opening up enterprise use cases, or connecting GenAI Fund to the right people.

And somehow, after we shared Agentic AI Build Week during the brunch, AI builder registrations magically jumped from 500 to 700.

Coincidence? Maybe. But we will let our special guests below take the credit.

What comes next: Agentic AI Build Week

If you are building with AI, exploring agentic workflows, or looking to connect with the next wave of AI builders in Southeast Asia, this is where the momentum continues.

Learn more and register for Agentic AI Build Week here: https://aabw.genaifund.ai/

Let’s keep building!

#genaibuildersmeetup AI codex