OPENAI
Code RED! I REPEAT, CODE RED!
OpenAI has declared a company-wide “code red” to improve ChatGPT, according to an internal memo seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Chief executive Sam Altman told staff that the priority is now the everyday user experience.
This includes making ChatGPT faster, more reliable, more personal, and able to answer a wider range of questions.
To free up resources, OpenAI has delayed other projects such as advertising tools, health and shopping agents, and its planned personal assistant, Pulse.
The decision follows growing competition from Google, whose latest Gemini update has outperformed OpenAI on several benchmarks, as well as rising business adoption of tools from Anthropic.
The memo also reflects the financial pressure on OpenAI.
The company is investing heavily in future data centres but is not yet profitable and depends on regular funding to operate.
Its performance is closely linked to partners such as Nvidia, Microsoft and Oracle.
While OpenAI has no immediate plans for an IPO, Altman highlighted that ChatGPT now has more than 800 million weekly users and that a new reasoning model due next week is expected to outperform the latest Gemini release.
In brief:
OpenAI is delaying other products so it can focus fully on improving ChatGPT.
Competition from Google and Anthropic is increasing pressure on performance and growth.
The company is still unprofitable despite its large global user base.
All hands on bot
The company is also continuing to adjust how it balances safety and usability after mixed feedback on GPT-5 earlier this year.
OpenAI had previously issued a lower “code orange” warning before escalating to its highest alert level.
Parts of the memo were first reported by The Information.
News Corp, which owns the Journal, has a content-licensing deal with OpenAI.
Code red is basically the tech bro version of “drop everything.” Lol.- MG