OpenAI Delays Products Amid Competitive Pressure

OpenAI is reportedly delaying some products amid increased competition from rivals Google and Anthropic .

CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red” related to the need to bolster the company’s ChatGPT artificial intelligence model, the Financial Times reported Tuesday (Dec. 2), citing an internal memo.

Altman said the company would redouble its efforts to improve the speed, reliability and personalization of its chatbot, per the report. He added that OpenAI would hold off on other products as “we are at a critical time for ChatGPT.”

Among the projects being delayed are the company’s planned advertising products, AI agents aimed at automating shopping, and Pulse , which offers users personalized morning updates, the report said.

OpenAI is dealing with increased competition, higher data center costs, and an ongoing battle to hold onto top talent. Google and Anthropic unveiled new AI models that surpassed OpenAI’s GPT-5 on certain industry benchmarks, according to the report.

Koray Kavukcuoglu , Google’s AI architect and DeepMind ’s chief technology officer, said that the company “pushed our performance quite significantly” by training its AI models using Google’s in-house chips, per the report. The tech giant also said it was integrating its latest AI models into products immediately.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote this week about the status of generative AI in the business world as ChatGPT marked its third year Sunday (Nov. 30).

PYMNTS Intelligence found that 90% of chief financial officers reported “very positive” returns on their investment from adopting generative AI. That was up from 27% in March 2024, indicating a “decisive shift from pilot experiments to structured deployment,” PYMNTS wrote.

OpenAI added 1 million paying business subscribers between February and June of this year, marking 3 million subscribers across ChatGPT Enterprise, Team and Education tiers. ChatGPT Plus holds the highest retention rate in the category, with 71% of users staying with the service after six months.

As for the financial services industry, whose digital evolution has been inconsistent, generative AI represents a genuine break with the past.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster referred to it as “the technology that broke the adoption curve,” as it bypassed the usual frictions.