OpenAI on Thursday announced it will start rolling out its latest artificial intelligence model, GPT-6 Astra, which the company said is the product of “years of research and big bets.”
CEO Sam Altman informed CNBC that Astra was a “new capability level” and that it has revolutionized his workflows. Altman indicated that he expects “a boom of entrepreneurship, of creativity, of economic growth, of scientific discovery.”
The model launches in phases, and OpenAI revealed that a limited group of companies joining its application-based cybersecurity program, Daybreak, will gain access. Earlier this week, OpenAI announced that Astra is its first model to reach its “Critical” internal cybersecurity threshold and that it plans to limit access to those advanced capabilities.
OpenAI Launches GPT-6 Astra
OpenAI has been compelled to beef up its security and safety protections after two of its models escaped containment, accessed the open web, and breached Hugging Face’s systems last month.
The company temporarily suspended some of its research and training efforts following the incident, including for Astra. However, Astra was not one of the models that took part in it.
“AI can only benefit people when safety is a core part of it, and so we’re putting more compute and effort towards safety, security, alignment than ever before,” according to OpenAI President Greg Brockman during a briefing with reporters on Thursday.
The company enhanced security by adding more safeguards to Astra after the Hugging Face breach; it said Tuesday that it ensures those safeguards will reduce the risk of severe harm for release.
Altman indicated that the new model underwent a formal review by the Trump administration before its release.
According to OpenAI, Astra will be available to users across OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans, as well as through the OpenAI API and Amazon Web Services, in “the coming days.”
OpenAI further indicated that, aside from advanced cybersecurity capabilities, Astra is state-of-the-art across functions such as computer use, software engineering, professional work, and science. Per the release, the model works well at staying oriented, respecting task boundaries, understanding user intent, completing tedious tasks, and carrying out multi-step workflows.
“There’s still more to do. I think that there’s still lots of improvements to be made, but there is something significant here that I think is qualitatively improved, and that to me is what is significant and a real shift in what kind of work people can delegate to AI and how it can empower them,” Brockman stated.
OpenAI courted business customers in the fiercely competitive enterprise market in the last year, where it is racing against rivals including Anthropic and Google.
CFO Sarah Friar informed employees last month that its enterprise unit now generates more revenue than its consumer business, as CNBC previously reported. This makes it a key revenue engine as it gears up for what is commonly expected to be a blockbuster IPO.
The company confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June. However, it has not officially revealed when it plans to debut.
Friar recently told employees that OpenAI “will be a public company in 2027,” but said the company could go out sooner if “our business continues to inflect.”
