OpenAI Declares Code Red as Google’s Gemini 3 Surges Ahead
OpenAI has entered an emergency acceleration phase following reports that CEO Sam Altman has issued a Code Red inside the company. The internal directive urges all teams to rapidly push development of ChatGPT after Google’s newly launched Gemini 3 gained widespread praise and surpassed OpenAI’s models in several benchmark tests, drawing significant momentum across social media.
The Code Red triggered major shifts within OpenAI’s internal roadmap. Several planned initiatives have been postponed, including the advertising system rollout, the new Pulse assistant feature and upcoming AI projects focused on health and shopping. Altman’s internal memo described the situation as a critical period for ChatGPT and requested certain teams to temporarily reorganize their staff while instituting daily meetings to accelerate model performance updates. The scene mirrors Google’s own emergency response in 2022 when ChatGPT first debuted and disrupted the search landscape.
Gemini 3 continues to trend strongly, quickly climbing to the top position on LMArena where users compare outputs from different AI models. Industry leaders have also publicly praised the model, such as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff who announced switching to Gemini 3 and highlighted its technological leap. User growth has surged as well, rising from 450 million monthly users in July to 650 million in October.
Despite OpenAI’s massive weekly user base of more than 800 million ChatGPT users, the company faces rising scrutiny over whether it is expanding too quickly. The financial strain behind scaling its AI infrastructure remains a key concern, as highlighted by a Reuters report that described the mounting cost pressure at a time when OpenAI announced new investment commitments with Thrive Capital and a collaboration with Accenture on the same day the Code Red memo surfaced.
A major weakness raised by analysts is OpenAI’s lack of a stable, high volume revenue engine comparable to Google’s advertising business. This forces the company to rely heavily on fundraising for long term survival. Reports indicate that OpenAI carries more than one trillion dollars in cloud and compute obligations despite holding a valuation of roughly half a trillion dollars.
However, the competition is far from settled. New reports suggest that OpenAI is preparing to unveil an advanced reasoning model next week which has reportedly outperformed Gemini 3 in internal evaluations. The rapid escalation between these two AI giants underscores how fiercely the race for technological leadership continues while vast amounts of investment capital keep flowing into the sector.
origin: Arstechnica
