Overview
- Sam Altman directed a companywide shift to prioritize ChatGPT quality, with temporary team transfers and daily coordination calls, according to reports from The Information and The Wall Street Journal.
- Work on advertising, shopping and health agents, and the Pulse assistant is on hold as resources move to core product improvements, multiple outlets reported.
- The memo says a new reasoning model is planned for release next week and claims it outperforms Google’s Gemini 3 in internal evaluations, though independent benchmark data has not been released.
- Google’s Gemini 3 posted top scores on several reasoning benchmarks and reported 650 million monthly users in October, while OpenAI cites about 800 million weekly users for ChatGPT.
- Recent code references in a ChatGPT Android beta suggested ad tests were underway, supporting reports that ad efforts existed before being paused; rivals including Anthropic have also advanced on certain tasks.