OpenAI launched its new frontier model, GPT-6 Astra, on September 3, but routed first access to enterprise customers on its Daybreak cybersecurity platform instead of paying ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers. CEO Sam Altman apologized the next day, calling the staged rollout "messy" and saying he could not yet promise when ordinary subscribers would get in, though he was "hopeful" it would happen over the weekend.
OpenAI says Astra is state-of-the-art on computer use, browsing, software engineering, cybersecurity, science and professional work, citing benchmark scores of 98% on FrontierMath Tier 4, 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3 and 100% on ExploitBench. API access is priced at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux said paying users would get a banked usage reset for each day they were locked out.
The episode highlights the pressure OpenAI faces to prove Astra's capabilities to enterprise and government partners while keeping its paying consumer base, the product's original audience, satisfied.