According to WSJ, Sam Altman activated an internal "red code" at OpenAI to accelerate improvements to ChatGPT across performance, reliability, and query handling.

Red code and objectives

OpenAI temporarily postponed some projects to concentrate engineering resources on making the model faster and more accurate for a wider range of user prompts, the report says.

The stated aims include reducing error rates, improving response times, and expanding the scope of requests the system can process correctly under production conditions.

Competition and financing

WSJ links the decision to intensified competition after a new version of Google Gemini increased user interest and Anthropic strengthened its position in the enterprise segment.

OpenAI remains unprofitable and faces significant capital needs; WSJ estimates financing requirements could reach $207 billion by 2030.

The move is described as internal and operational, with the company not publicly quantifying changes to project timelines or deliverables at this stage.