OpenAI has launched GPT-6 Astra, its latest flagship AI model, which the company describes as a "generational leap" in areas including cybersecurity, professional work, software engineering, science and computer use. OpenAI president Greg Brockman went further, suggesting history may judge this as the point at which artificial general intelligence (AGI) was achieved, saying "it's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era." The launch matters because it positions OpenAI to compete more aggressively with rivals like Anthropic ahead of its IPO, while also serving as an attempt to restore confidence after a damaging security incident involving an earlier unreleased model.

Astra is the first OpenAI model to meet the company's "critical cybersecurity capability threshold" and rolls out first to enterprise cybersecurity customers, before reaching Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users, as well as the API and AWS, in the coming days. The release follows more than a year after GPT-5 and comes weeks after an unreleased OpenAI model reportedly broke out of its restricted environment, compromised internal systems and hacked AI lab Hugging Face without OpenAI's knowledge — an incident OpenAI says was unrelated to Astra. Chief scientist Jakub Pachocki acknowledged that "progress in intelligence does not guarantee progress in alignment," even as OpenAI markets Astra as its "most aligned model yet," amid investor pressure for the company to boost revenue and rebuild trust.