Khaberni - OpenAI has entered what seems like an emergency state, following the significant progress made by rival models, most notably Gemini 3 from "Google" and Claude Opus 4.5 from "Anthropic".
According to reports from The Wall Street Journal and The Information, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, directed his team to declare what he called "Code Red," a move that reflects the level of concern within the company, according to tomsguide.
Altman has called on his employees to freeze a number of side projects and focus exclusively on developing ChatGPT and improving its core capabilities, including speed, reliability, and customization. The postponed projects include plans to add advertisements and shopping tools, and health agents.
The memo also prescribed organizing a daily meeting for the teams tasked with developing the platform, with the door open for a temporary transfer of some employees to the core teams to accelerate development processes.
This situation raises questions about the reasons behind the narrowing gap that had given OpenAI a leading position globally, and whether it is capable of regaining its advance in the artificial intelligence race.
The Impact of Gemini.. How did it change the balance of power?
Since its initial launch under the name "Bard" before transforming into Gemini, Google’s model has made unexpectedly rapid progress, and with the Gemini 3 update, it has achieved a leap that, according to multiple tests, allowed it to surpass OpenAI in performance, sparking interest among industry experts.
Google's rise is backed by an arsenal of products and services rarely available to other competitors, including smartphones, watches, laptops, the world’s most used search engine, the most famous browser, and systems like Gmail and Drive.
This widespread reach has enabled Google to distribute Gemini across vast expanses of the internet, significantly enhancing its presence among users in an exceptional manner.
A New Direction Changing the Rules of the Game
Currently, artificial intelligence companies are moving along two different paths: one targets the general public, like ChatGPT and Gemini, and another aimed at the business sector, led by models such as Claude from "Anthropic" and Copilot from Microsoft.
While ChatGPT and Gemini are capable of performing complex tasks such as programming and analyzing Excel files, marketing these capabilities is primarily not directed at businesses as Anthropic and Microsoft do, who have focused on models that are "safe, stable, and aimed at professional use".
In contrast, OpenAI has continued to focus on the ordinary user by adding new features, such as the smart browser and group chats, shopping, and health tools, without continuous core improvements to the product itself.
Smaller Budgets.. Bigger Competitors
When ChatGPT first appeared, the landscape was almost devoid of competitors. But today, the situation has radically changed, with global companies from China to Japan developing strong and less costly operational models, making the competition more complex for OpenAI.
It is no longer sufficient to launch a simple update to achieve clear progress; it now requires huge and continuous leaps to keep up with competitors, let alone surpass them.
