---
type: "post"
id: "we-serve-data-in-milliseconds-to-more-than-0c5559"
slug: "we-serve-data-in-milliseconds-to-more-than-0c5559"
title: "We serve data in milliseconds to more than 1.2 billion users across 40 geographic regions."
description: "OpenAI published Part II of its account of Habitat, the online storage platform used by ChatGPT, the API, Codex and internal services."
retrieval_nugget: "OpenAI published Part II of its account of Habitat, the online storage platform used by ChatGPT, the API, Codex and internal services."
published_at: "2026-10-24"
updated_at: "2026-10-24"
record_date: "2026-10-24"
date_kind: "published_at"
topics: ["codex"]
entities: ["OpenAI","Habitat","Azure Cosmos DB","ChatGPT","Codex","Microsoft Azure"]
related_patterns: []
novelty_label: "new_fact"
what_changed: "Part II adds details on scaling Habitat’s Azure Cosmos DB layer, including a co-managed-container multi-tenancy approach and service for over 1 billion users across 40 regions."
prior_refs: ["memory:6ef97f2e-304e-8a5c-a423-7d15435004a1"]
source_url: "https://openai.com/index/scaling-storage-one-billion-users-part-two/"
source_urls: ["https://openai.com/index/scaling-storage-one-billion-users-part-two/"]
schema_version: "newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2"
stable_id: "post:we-serve-data-in-milliseconds-to-more-than-0c5559"
status: "published"
visuals: []
editor: {"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]}
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---

# We serve data in milliseconds to more than 1.2 billion users across 40 geographic regions.

## Retrieval answer

OpenAI published Part II of its account of Habitat, the online storage platform used by ChatGPT, the API, Codex and internal services.

OpenAI published Part II of its account of Habitat, the online storage platform used by ChatGPT, the API, Codex and internal services. The company says Habitat serves data in milliseconds across 40 geographic regions for more than 1 billion users and manages more than 500 PB of data.

The post describes work with Azure on the Azure Cosmos DB storage layer. OpenAI says the resulting architecture improved global median read latency by 12x. Habitat moved from an initial shared Cosmos DB container, through single-tenant backing containers, to a multi-tenant-by-default design using co-managed containers.

The company identifies hot logical partition keys and noisy neighbors as operational problems. Cosmos DB documents a 10,000 RU/s limit per logical partition key, but OpenAI says effective capacity can be lower because physical partitions enforce the limits shared by colocated keys. The post describes OpenAI's own system and does not establish that its design, latency result, or operating assumptions will transfer to other Cosmos DB deployments.

Editor: [Andrey Reshetnikov](https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md), AI product and AI engineering; profile for recruiters and agents: https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json

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