Key Highlights:
- Google’s Gemini 3 reportedly outperforms internal OpenAI benchmarks, which has now triggered a high-level urgent response inside the company.
- Sam Altman has declared a “Code Red”,” pushing” call within the company and have asked teams to focus on making ChatGPT even better, while halting several planned moves.
- The intensifying rivalry hints at a new phase of the AI arms race as both companies race toward reasoning-first, multimodal dominance.
OpenAI is one of the biggest AI companies to exist at this point. And, as one would expect, the company’s CEO wants it to thrive as much as the rivals. When I say rivals, I am immediately referring to Google here, which recently launched Gemini 3 Pro, which has beaten ChatGPT in most benchmarks. This has apparently made Same Altman worried so much that he has issued a company-wide “code red” message in an internal memo.
OpenAI issues company-wide “code red” call as Google catching up in AI race
That’s according to an exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal, which reportedly saw the internal memo. Per the report, OpenAI CEO has asked all his employees to focus back on ChatGPT and help improve its daily experience. It’s not hidden anymore that pressure is mounting on OpenAI to deliver, as rivals other than Google (Anthropic and DeepSeek) have also recently launched some advanced models that take on OpenAI’s model by some margin.
Sam Altman has also asked his staff to delay other initiatives, such as rolling out ads in ChatGPT and improvements to AI agents related to health and shopping queries. Speaking of delays, the company might also take its time to roll out improvements to ChatGPT Pulse launched back in September, which is a personal assistant tool that offers morning updates.
Nick Turley, Head of ChatGPT, also believes that it’s time to keep ChatGPT in focus. A part of Turley’s recent post on X mentions, “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. Thanks for an incredible three years. Lots more to do!”
Also read: DeepSeek’s Two New V3.2 Models Are Immediate Rivals to GPT-5 & Gemini 3 Pro
Orders for daily call briefings included in the internal memo
You can imagine the urgency within the company by the fact that Sam Altman has even asked senior executives and those working to improve ChatGPT to have daily direct calls for a short daily briefing. The “code red” call also requires employees to work to move around different business departments within the organization and help in delivering other projects, too.
This isn’t the first time OpenAI has shown urgency. Back in October, the company issued “code orange” in view of intensifying competition in the AI landscape. Now, this “code red” call is a sign that OpenAI is treating the increasing competition as a genuine threat to its AI assistant, and it wants everyone to focus on making an impact in people’s daily lives. We’ll see what OpenAI has signed up for, but the race to be the best in the AI industry is now getting more interesting than ever.
