OpenAI has announced that it has rewritten its online storage platform, "Habitat"—which handles fast and reliable access to the data used by its products—from Python to Rust.

Habitat serves as the foundation for products used by over 1 billion users weekly, processing more than 2,00 million requests per second at peak times. The company has previously operated it as a Python-based distributed system to accommodate rapid user growth; however, in Q2 2026, they completed a full rewrite to Rust using only two engineers and AI models.

According to OpenAI's announcement, the migration to Rust has improved CPU efficiency by 6x and memory efficiency by 15x compared to the previous Python version. Additionally, both average and tail latency (significant delays occurring under specific conditions) have been substantially reduced. Currently, 95% of requests in the company's production environment is being handled by this Rust-based service, and they are expected to completely decommission the Python implementation within a few weeks.

Source: