OpenAI is pushing staff to speed up improvements to ChatGPT after fresh advances from competitors prompted concerns about the company’s position in the fast-moving artificial intelligence market.
Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, told employees at the start of the week that OpenAI needed to focus its efforts on sharpening the performance of ChatGPT, according to a report from The Information.
In the note, he described the situation as a “code red”, signalling a shift of resources away from other product work, including plans for AI agents.
Google has recently unveiled Gemini 3, its latest large language model, which drew strong reviews and lifted Alphabet’s shares to a new high. Early benchmark tests suggested Gemini 3 outperformed ChatGPT on a range of measures.
The launch drew praise across Silicon Valley, including from Salesforce boss Mark Benioff, who said he had switched to Google’s tool.
Anthropic, another well-funded challenger, released its new model, Claude Opus 4.5, in late November, adding to the competitive squeeze.
OpenAI has ambitious targets for the coming years, projecting revenue rising from $13 billion in 2025 to $200 billion by the end of the decade. It has also promised vast investment in data centre infrastructure, agreeing major supply deals with CoreWeave, Oracle and several chip producers.