US News: OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has issued an urgent “code red” directive across the company, ordering teams to drop non-essential projects and focus exclusively on making ChatGPT faster, more reliable, and significantly smarter in response to Google’s rapid gains with its new Gemini 3 model.
The internal memo, first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by multiple sources familiar with the matter, marks one of the clearest signs yet that OpenAI feels its lead in consumer artificial intelligence is slipping. Google unveiled Gemini 3 on November 18, immediately claiming top scores on several major industry benchmarks and rolling the model out to hundreds of millions of users through Search, Gmail, and its mobile apps.
The launch triggered a sharp rally in Alphabet shares and fueled a surge in adoption of Google’s AI assistant, which grew from 450 million monthly active users in July to 650 million by October. Much of that growth has been attributed to Nano Banana, Google’s highly popular image-generation tool released in August.
Inside OpenAI, the reaction was swift. Altman instructed staff to pause work on a range of planned features, including advertising integrations, AI-powered shopping tools, specialized agents for health and finance, and Pulse, a forthcoming personal assistant meant to deliver tailored daily briefings. Daily progress checks and resource reassignments are now in place for teams working directly on ChatGPT’s core experience.
Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, acknowledged the intensified focus in a post on X, writing, “We are doubling down on making ChatGPT more capable, more intuitive, and more personal while continuing to expand access worldwide.”
The scramble comes as OpenAI faces mounting financial pressure. The company is not yet profitable and continues to burn through billions of dollars annually on computing power and research. Internal projections show OpenAI aiming for roughly $13 billion in revenue this year, with ambitions to reach nearly $200 billion by 2030 to achieve sustained profitability.
Altman has publicly dismissed concerns about the company’s runway, pointing to ChatGPT’s more than 800 million weekly active users and its growing role in everyday search and productivity tasks.
Industry analysts see Google’s scale and distribution power as the biggest long-term challenge for OpenAI. While ChatGPT remains the most recognized name in generative AI, Google can embed its models directly into products used by billions of people, giving it an advantage in both reach and real-world data for further training.
Anthropic’s Claude models have also gained traction among enterprise customers, adding another layer of competition.
For now, OpenAI’s leadership is betting that a renewed obsession with product quality and user experience can widen the gap again. Whether that proves enough against a resurgent Google remains one of the most closely watched storylines in technology.
