Inside OpenAI, urgency continues to shape daily operations as the company works under an internal Red Alert declared earlier this month. The move reflects heightened pressure on the maker of ChatGPT as competition in the artificial intelligence space intensifies, especially after Google’s Gemini 3 model gained rapid traction among users and enterprises.
The situation emerged as Gemini 3 began outperforming OpenAI models on several key benchmarks, raising concerns around market perception, adoption, and near-term business impact. In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman activated the Red Alert, an informal but serious call for faster execution and sharper focus across teams.
“We announced this code red to really signal to the company that we want to marshal resources in one particular area, and that’s a way to really define priorities and define things that can be deprioritised,” said Fidji Simo, CEO of applications at OpenAI, as quoted by a business news outlet. She added that resources have been increased around ChatGPT, though this alone did not dictate the exact timing of recent releases.
Altman later downplayed the extent of the threat, noting that the impact of Gemini 3 on OpenAI’s performance metrics was less severe than initially expected. “I believe that when a competitive threat happens, you want to focus on it and deal with it quickly,” he said, adding that the Red Alert phase is likely to conclude by January.
The heightened internal focus coincided with the accelerated launch of GPT 5.2 last week. OpenAI described it as its most capable model so far for everyday professional use, with improvements across tasks such as spreadsheets, presentations, coding, image understanding, and handling long and complex contexts.
The Red Alert, however, goes beyond a single product launch. Over the coming weeks, OpenAI is expected to remain sharply focused on strengthening ChatGPT. This includes improving performance, ensuring reliability at scale, and speeding up iteration cycles.
Internally, engineers, researchers, and computing resources are being redirected toward core AI development. At the same time, projects not directly linked to improving ChatGPT are reportedly being slowed or set aside.
As competition with Google and other AI players heats up, OpenAI’s current strategy reflects a clear priority: defend and reinforce its flagship product while staying agile in a fast-moving market.
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