OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has issued a “code red” to refocus the company on urgently upgrading ChatGPT as competition from Google intensifies.
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San Francisco, United States — December 3, 2025:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly declared a “code red” inside the company, signaling a rare and urgent shift in priorities. According to an internal memo described by The Wall Street Journal, Altman instructed teams to pause development on several upcoming products and instead concentrate fully on upgrading ChatGPT’s speed, reliability, and personalization features. The directive arrives as the chatbot reaches its three-year anniversary—a milestone that once positioned OpenAI as the unrivaled leader in generative AI but now highlights the challenges of maintaining that edge.
The urgency is driven largely by intensifying competition. Google’s release of Gemini 3 last month has raised the stakes in the AI assistant market, prompting concerns that OpenAI’s flagship product risks losing momentum. While ChatGPT continues to attract an enormous user base—more than 800 million weekly users, by Altman’s recent count—the company’s financial and infrastructural burdens loom large over its future. Despite a valuation of around $500 billion, OpenAI remains unprofitable and carries more than $1 trillion in long-term cloud and chip commitments, costs that weigh heavily on investors already wary of a potential AI bubble.
These pressures have pushed OpenAI to reassess its priorities. Altman’s memo reportedly instructs staff to halt work on areas such as advertising initiatives, AI shopping and health assistants, and a personal assistant project known as Pulse. The decision underscores the company’s intention to focus on what continues to define its public identity: ChatGPT itself. Executives, including Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, have emphasized that search and greater personalization remain major targets as OpenAI aims to make its assistant more intuitive in daily use.
Meanwhile, revenue growth remains a complicated challenge. While OpenAI generates significant income through paid subscriptions, the vast majority of its users rely on the free version of ChatGPT. The company’s recent launch of its Atlas web browser was an attempt to broaden its ecosystem and compete more directly with Google Chrome as users increasingly turn to AI-powered search. Yet OpenAI has so far avoided adopting advertising models, creating an additional revenue gap compared with Google’s mature ad-driven platforms.
The “code red” declaration illustrates how rapidly the AI landscape is evolving. OpenAI now must balance its ambition to innovate with the mounting financial realities behind running large-scale AI systems. By temporarily freezing new projects and doubling down on ChatGPT, Altman is wagering that strengthening the company’s core product is the clearest path to sustaining leadership in an increasingly crowded and costly AI race.