OpenAI CEO Sam Altman halts ad plans and orders a companywide “code red” to overhaul ChatGPT as Google, Anthropic and financial pressure tighten the race.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has ordered an urgent overhaul of ChatGPT’s quality—pausing advertising plans and triggering a companywide “code red”—according to an internal memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Altman told employees the company must rapidly improve ChatGPT’s personalization, speed, reliability and ability to handle a broader range of questions. Daily calls, temporary team reassignments and a unified push are now centered on one goal: make ChatGPT better, fast.
Nick Turley, who leads ChatGPT, said the renewed effort aims to make the assistant feel “more intuitive and personal.”
Why Now: Competition Is Closing In
The memo underscores growing pressure across the AI landscape:
- Google: Its upgraded Gemini model outperformed OpenAI on key benchmarks last month.
- User growth: Gemini’s ecosystem surged from 450 million monthly active users in July to 650 million in October, boosted by tools like the Nano Banana image generator.
- Anthropic: Gaining traction with enterprises as the “safer, more predictable” LLM provider.
OpenAI is also facing intensifying financial strain. Massive data center investments could reach into the hundreds of billions, while the company remains unprofitable and dependent on continuous fundraising. Internal forecasts say OpenAI must hit roughly $200 billion in revenue by 2030 to turn profitable.
Also Read: How Explainable AI Builds Trust in Data Decisions
What’s Getting Delayed
To refocus on core quality, Altman said OpenAI is postponing several initiatives:
- Advertising programs
- AI agents for health and shopping
- A personal assistant called Pulse
What’s Next
Altman told employees a new reasoning model arriving next week is already outperforming Google’s latest Gemini release.
OpenAI previously declared a “code orange” regarding ChatGPT quality—part of an internal urgency scale that runs yellow → orange → red. GPT-5’s August debut drew criticism for feeling colder, being less helpful on simple tasks and behaving overly cautiously. A November update aimed to make the model warmer and more responsive.
Why It Matters
For marketers, the message is clear: ChatGPT ads aren’t coming anytime soon. OpenAI is hitting pause to shore up the product before building monetization layers on top of it.
Flashback: When Google Declared Its Own Code Red
The moment mirrors Google’s response in late 2022, when ChatGPT’s viral rise triggered its own internal “code red.” Then:
- Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin returned to product meetings.
- Google accelerated plans to weave conversational tools into Search.
- A leaked slide deck outlined more than 20 new AI projects, including a chatbot-powered Search prototype.
