New Delhi: OpenAI is shifting gears again. Chief executive Sam Altman has told employees that the company is entering a “code red” phase to urgently improve ChatGPT. The surprising move comes as competition from Google and Anthropic heats up, and ChatGPT’s early dominance starts to feel less comfortable.
Inside OpenAI, teams have now been ordered to push aside other plans and focus fully on speed, reliability and more personal interactions.
Gemini 3 pressure makes OpenAI change plans
As per a report by The Information, in the internal memo, Altman said “we are at a critical time for ChatGPT” as the company tries to stay ahead. That means several product ideas are paused for now. According to the memo, OpenAI is delaying:
• Advertising products
• AI shopping and health assistants
• Pulse, a tool for personalised daily updates
These were expected to be new revenue sources. Instead, the company will use its resources to fix the core experience.
The change comes just weeks after Google released Gemini 3. Industry data suggests it may have leapfrogged OpenAI’s GPT 5 on several benchmark tests. Anthropic’s Opus 4.5 also scored higher than GPT 5 in multiple areas. Google DeepMind’s chief technology officer Koray Kavukcuoglu said they “pushed our performance quite significantly” by training their latest models on custom chips.
That comment did not go unnoticed in San Francisco.
Competition rising and users switching apps
OpenAI still has over 800 million weekly ChatGPT users. But new data from Similarweb shows people are spending more time chatting with Gemini than ChatGPT. That shift, however small for now, signals changing habits. Google has tightly integrated Gemini across its apps. So users may simply find it easier to try AI where they already live.
Nick Turley, vice president and head of ChatGPT, tried to strike an optimistic tone. He said “Our focus now is to keep making ChatGPT more capable, continue growing, and expand access around the world while making it feel even more intuitive and personal.” He also pointed out that ChatGPT already makes up “roughly 10 per cent of search activity, and it’s growing quickly.”
Running a frontier model is expensive
Altman’s memo also reflects the reality of building huge AI systems. Data centers cost more every quarter. Hiring expert researchers is tough when rivals are offering sky high salaries. And every delay gives competitors an open door. Even OpenAI has struggled recently with model training methods, according to the report.
Before Gemini 3 launched, Altman warned employees that they would “need to stay focused through short term competitive pressure” and that “the vibes out there” would be rough.
That is exactly what is happening now.
A long race, not a quick sprint
Advertising inside ChatGPT was expected to roll out soon. Now it is on hold. The company continues to make money through subscriptions like ChatGPT Plus and enterprise deals. But it knows that product quality matters most if it wants to keep billions of people coming back.
This reset might help ChatGPT feel smarter and faster again. Users will not complain about that. The bigger question is whether OpenAI can move quickly enough while the rest of the AI industry speeds ahead.