OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Friday that the company is now planning to release the previously canceled o3 and a new o4-mini model in the coming weeks, while delaying its flagship GPT-5 model to focus on significant enhancements.
Key Points:
- OpenAI now plans to release o3 and o4-mini "in a couple of weeks"
- GPT-5 delayed by "a few months" to make substantial improvements
- Company cites technical integration challenges and capacity concerns for high anticipated demand
"We are going to be able to make GPT-5 much better than we originally thought," Altman wrote, explaining the schedule change. He pointed to two additional factors: technical integration challenges and the need to ensure sufficient capacity for what the company anticipates will be "unprecedented demand" when GPT-5 launches.
change of plans: we are going to release o3 and o4-mini after all, probably in a couple of weeks, and then do GPT-5 in a few months.
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 4, 2025
there are a bunch of reasons for this, but the most exciting one is that we are going to be able to make GPT-5 much better than we originally…
The announcement marks a significant reversal from February, when OpenAI effectively scrapped plans for a standalone o3 release. At that time, the company announced it was restructuring its AI roadmap to consolidate efforts around GPT-5 as a unified intelligence model that would incorporate reasoning capabilities alongside other features.
When GPT-5 does arrive, OpenAI says it will offer unlimited chat access at a "standard intelligence setting" while providing ChatGPT Plus customers access to "a higher level of intelligence" and ChatGPT Pro subscribers an "even higher level of intelligence."
For users awaiting these releases, the revised schedule offers a clearer picture of OpenAI's roadmap. The unexpected addition of o4-mini suggests the company isn't slowing its pace of innovation, even as it works to perfect its flagship model. And though GPT-5's delay might disappoint some, Altman's promise of substantial improvements indicates the wait could well be worthwhile.