The Wall Street Journal and The Information reported that CEO Sam Altman issued a “code red” memo to employees on Monday, calling for rapid improvements to ChatGPT’s models.
The move follows Google’s release of Gemini 3, which outperformed OpenAI’s systems in key benchmarks and poses a threat to the company’s revenue. OpenAI serves more than 800 million monthly users, most of whom use the free tier. Meanwhile, Gemini’s user base has grown from 450 million in July to 650 million in October.
Rising Competitive Pressure
Google’s Nano Banana image generator, launched in August, is viewed as a major catalyst for its recent growth. The company introduced Gemini 3 Pro last month and an improved Nano Banana Pro image generator soon after. Anthropic also released Claude Opus 4.5, which competes with Gemini 3 and GPT-5.
These developments raise the risk that OpenAI may lose users, including paid subscribers, to its rivals. The company remains unprofitable and must continue raising capital to operate and expand data centers. It will need to grow revenue to $200 billion by 2030 to reach profitability.
New ChatGPT Model Coming Very Soon
The Journal noted that OpenAI uses yellow, orange, and red codes to signal urgency, and that the company previously issued a “code orange” to improve ChatGPT. Altman’s new memo elevates the urgency to “code red.” Google made a similar internal declaration three years ago after ChatGPT went viral and has expanded its AI services since then. Altman outlined several upgrades for ChatGPT, including better personalization, speed, and reliability, as well as broader question-answering capabilities. He confirmed that a new reasoning model will arrive next week.
The upcoming ChatGPT model is expected to outperform Gemini 3. The outlet also reported that OpenAI plans to upgrade its image generation tools. Both reports said that ChatGPT ads, AI agents for shopping and healthcare, and improvements to ChatGPT Pulse will be delayed.
Although Altman’s memo has not been released in full, Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT, summarized the chatbot’s three-year progress on X on Monday. He stated that the company aims to “keep making ChatGPT more capable, continue growing, and expand access around the world, while making it feel even more intuitive and personal.”
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