OpenAI Launches 'World's Most Intelligent' AI Model GPT-6 Astra

OpenAI has officially launched GPT-6 Astra, its latest artificial intelligence model, describing it as "the world's most intelligent" model. The company says Astra is designed to handle complex tasks across software engineering, science, cybersecurity, financial modelling and data analysis, while also taking on practical work such as tax preparation and form filling. 

OpenAI President Greg Brockman described the model as a "generational leap in capability" while speaking to reporters at a press briefing.

GPT-6 Astra is state-of-the-art on FrontierMath Tier 4, ARC-AGI 3, and TerminalBench-4.0.

GPT‑6 Astra is also a major advance for scientific discovery, with state-of-the-art performance on Terminal-Bench Science 0.1 and HealthBench Pro. pic.twitter.com/7hEFadVAN9

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 3, 2026

Brockman also addressed the long-running debate around Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. According to The Verge, Brockman said that people looking back in a few years could potentially identify Astra as the point when AGI was created. 

He went further, saying, "For me personally, I do think we're there," before concluding, "Welcome to the AGI era." OpenAI's official Astra documentation, meanwhile, focuses on the model's capabilities, safety measures and cybersecurity risks rather than formally declaring AGI.

GPT-6 Astra is here.

We hope it will begin to enable a new generation of entrepreneurship, scientific discovery, and building.

We believe it is the best model in the world for computer use, professional work, science, coding, cybersecurity, and more.

It took us some extra time…

— Sam Altman (@sama) September 3, 2026

Cybersecurity And A Controlled Rollout

Cybersecurity is one of the biggest areas of focus for Astra. OpenAI says the model has reached its Critical cybersecurity capability threshold, meaning it can identify and develop functional exploits for vulnerabilities in hardened systems. 

The company says Astra discovered two previously unknown vulnerabilities during internal evaluations, which were disclosed to maintainers. Because these capabilities can be used for both defence and exploitation, OpenAI is initially restricting access to its most advanced cybersecurity capabilities, with trusted defenders getting access through the Daybreak Blue programme.

In a blog post, OpenAI said Astra can autonomously handle a wide range of "tedious" computer tasks, including website creation, scientific analysis, game development, cybersecurity and coding.

To illustrate the time savings of building autonomous AI agents with Astra, the company said the model could cut apartment hunting from six hours to under 10 minutes.

Astra Launch Day Also Saw An AI Outage

But on the same day OpenAI was preparing to roll out Astra, ChatGPT, Claude and Grok all experienced outages. According to The Verge, ChatGPT users reported problems with conversations, logins, file uploads, voice mode, search, Deep Research and image generation, while Claude and Grok also faced service disruptions. 

The exact causes of the simultaneous outages were unclear, and there was no confirmed evidence that Astra caused the ChatGPT outage. OpenAI says Astra will be made available to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users, as well as API developers, in the coming days.