Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO speaks during a media tour of the Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025. Stargate is a collaboration of OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, with promotional support from President Donald Trump, to build data centers and other infrastructure for artificial intelligence throughout the U.S.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Sam Altman is feeling the pressure.
The OpenAI CEO sent a memo to his staffers on Monday outlining a “code red” effort to improve its chatbot ChatGPT, according to multiple reports. Altman said OpenAI will be pulling back on investments in areas like health, shopping and advertising as it works to prioritize ChatGPT, the reports said.
OpenAI declined to comment on Tuesday.
“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,” Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, wrote in a post on X on Monday.
The Information was first to report on the memo.
More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, but the company is facing increasingly stiff competition from rivals like Google and Anthropic.
Google announced its latest artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3, last month, which topped industry benchmarks and was widely lauded by users, researchers and developers across social media.
The company said its Gemini app has 650 million monthly active users while AI Overviews, which appear at the top of search results, have 2 billion monthly users.
Altman congratulated Google on the launch, writing in a post on X last month that Gemini 3 “looks like a great model.”
Anthropic, meanwhile, has shown strong momentum with enterprises.
As of September, the startup said it has more than 300,000 business customers, up from less than 1,000 just two years ago. Large accounts, which Anthropic defines as customers that each represent more than $100,000 in run-rate revenue, grew more than seven times in the past year, the company said.
OpenAI launched as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, but has quickly become one of the fastest-growing commercial entities on the planet following the launch of ChatGPT three years ago.
The company’s valuation has swelled to $500 billion as it’s worked to deploy its technology around the globe.
In recent months, OpenAI has made more $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments in a deal-making blitz. The staggering sum has raised eyebrows and prompted questions about how the company will be able to afford those commitments.
Altman has repeatedly brushed off concerns.
Last month, OpenAI said it is on track to reach more than $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate this year, with plans to grow to hundreds of billions in sales by 2030.
In a lengthy post on X in November, Altman said large infrastructure projects take time to build, which is why the company needed to start now.
“This is the bet we are making, and given our vantage point, we feel good about it,” Altman wrote.
Weeks later, Altman seems to be feeling the heat.
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