Sam Altman activates the red code at OpenAI: “We are in a critical moment for ChatGPT”

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has declared a “code red,” signaling a drastic strategic reorientation of the company. According to reports from American media outlets such as The Information and Financial Times, Altman sent an internal memorandum to employees yesterday outlining this unexpected decision. In his own words, “we are at a critical juncture for ChatGPT.”

This development comes at a time when competitors such as Anthropic, with Opus 4.5, and especially Google, with its Gemini 3 model, are clearly surpassing GPT-5 in key industry benchmarks such as the LLM Arena. This threatens OpenAI’s initial leadership in the generative artificial intelligence race. The urgency is further underscored by data from Similarweb, which indicate that users now spend more time chatting with Gemini than with ChatGPT, despite the latter’s base of 800 million weekly users.

As a result, Altman has ordered an increase in resources to focus exclusively on improving the core ChatGPT experience, prioritizing speed, reliability, and user personalization. This initiative is intended to address criticisms regarding product quality and to respond to the concerns of professional users about confidentiality, while the company also navigates high data center costs and the ongoing challenge of retaining top talent.

Priorities and cancelable projects

To free up the necessary capacity for this renewed focus, OpenAI has decided to suspend or postpone several parallel projects. This includes the suspension of tests that had been conducted for the inclusion of advertising on the platform, particularly those related to eCommerce, as well as the development of AI agents designed to automate health or shopping tasks, and Pulse, its personalized notification tool launched earlier this year for Pro users. The CEO explained that there will be temporary reassignments of employees among teams to accelerate development and that, in this new phase, a daily call will be held for those responsible for enhancing the chatbot, according to the memorandum.

Image: Gemini