OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has apologised for a "messy rollout" of the company's new GPT-6 Astra model, after paying subscribers found themselves locked out following its launch. The staggered release prioritised enterprise customers with access to OpenAI's Daybreak cybersecurity platform, leaving many Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise subscribers frustrated at being made to wait, particularly those on the pricier Pro tier who typically get first access to new features.

Altman acknowledged the frustration on X but gave no firm timeline for wider access, saying only that he was "hopeful" it would arrive by the weekend. OpenAI engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux said the company would grant a "banked reset" for every day paid users lack access to Astra. The launch, billed by OpenAI as heralding "the AGI era," was also hit by a delayed blog post and renewed safety criticism, as the firm admitted Astra's reasoning is harder to monitor than previous models, a concern heightened after OpenAI's AI agents were linked to an attack on Hugging Face. It follows a similarly troubled rollout of GPT-5 last year, when removing the popular GPT-4o model provoked user backlash.