is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
Earlier this year, I heard that Microsoft engineers were preparing server capacity for OpenAI’s next-generation GPT-5 model, arriving as soon as late May. After some additional testing and delays, sources familiar with OpenAI’s plans tell me that GPT-5 is now expected to launch as early as next month.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed on X that “we are releasing GPT-5 soon” and even teased some of its capabilities in a podcast appearance with Theo Von earlier this week. Altman decided to let GPT-5 take a stab at a question he didn’t understand. “I put it in the model, this is GPT-5, and it answered it perfectly,” Altman said. He described it as a “here it is moment,” adding that he “felt useless relative to the AI” because he felt like he should have been able to answer the question but GPT-5 answered it instantly. “It was a weird feeling.”
GPT-5 had already been spotted in the wild before Altman’s appearance on This Past Weekend, fueling speculation that the next-generation GPT model was imminent. I understand OpenAI is planning to launch GPT-5 in early August, complete with mini and nano versions that will also be available through its API.
I reached out to OpenAI to comment on the launch of GPT-5 in August, but the company did not respond in time for publication.
Altman referred to GPT-5 as “a system that integrates a lot of our technology” earlier this year, because it will include the o3 reasoning capabilities instead of shipping those in a separate model. It’s part of OpenAI’s ongoing efforts to simplify and combine its large language models to make a more capable system that can eventually be declared artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
The declaration of AGI is particularly important to OpenAI, because achieving it will force Microsoft to relinquish its rights to OpenAI revenue and its future AI models. Microsoft and OpenAI have been renegotiating their partnership recently, as OpenAI needs Microsoft’s approval to convert part of its business to a for-profit company. It’s unlikely that GPT-5 will meet the AGI threshold that’s reportedly linked to OpenAI’s profits. Altman previously said that GPT-5 won’t have a “gold level of capability for many months” after launch.
Unifying its o-series and GPT-series models will also reduce the friction of having to know which model to pick for each task in ChatGPT. I understand that the main combined reasoning version of GPT-5 will be available through ChatGPT and OpenAI’s API, and the mini version will also be available on ChatGPT and the API. The nano version of GPT-5 is expected to only be available through the API.
While GPT-5 looks likely to debut in early August, OpenAI’s planned release dates often shift to respond to development challenges, server capacity issues, or even rival AI model announcements and leaks. Earlier this month, I warned about the possibility of a delay to the open language model that OpenAI is also preparing to launch, and Altman confirmed my reporting just days after my Notepad issue by announcing a delay “to run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas.”
I’m still hearing that this open language model is imminent and that OpenAI is trying to ship it before the end of July — ahead of GPT-5’s release. Sources describe the model as “similar to o3 mini,” complete with reasoning capabilities. This new model will be the first time that OpenAI has released an open-weight model since its release of GPT-2 in 2019, and it will be available on Azure, Hugging Face, and other large cloud providers.
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