OpenAI is no stranger to messy timelines. The company has a history of delays, changes and strange turns in the road. But with its latest delay, the extended timeline might actually be good news.
“We are going to take a little more time with our open-weights model, i.e. expect it later this summer but not June,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI announced in a post on X.
“Our research team did something unexpected and quite amazing and we think it will be very very worth the wait, but needs a bit longer.”
we are going to take a little more time with our open-weights model, i.e. expect it later this summer but not june.our research team did something unexpected and quite amazing and we think it will be very very worth the wait, but needs a bit longer.June 10, 2025
OpenAI has been teasing news of a new open-weight model for a while now, originally planning for an early summer release. This would offer reasoning capabilities similar to OpenAI’s o-series models, but open to the public.
Openweight models are a type of AI model where the trained parameters are publicly available. In other words, they are fully trained AI systems that any individual or company can download and use for their own projects without having to perform the intensive process of building and training a model.
Why the delay?
For now, Altman hasn’t stated why the model is being pushed back. All we know is that the team has apparently done something “unexpected and quite amazing”.
The AI market, especially the open-weight one, has become a lot more competitive in recent months. New competitors are coming in and doing it cheaper than OpenAI.
Mistral, another big AI lab, released its first range of AI reasoning models and competitors like Deepseek, Microsoft and Google are all also deep into the open-weight AI market.
If the OpenAI team discovered something they could add to the model to beef it up against the competition, a short delay could be well worth it for the company to get an edge.
What about GPT-5?
For most people, all eyes will be on the release of GPT-5 — the latest update to OpenAI’s ChatGPT model.
While no official date has been given for this, most analysts believe it will be launching in the next couple of months, likely in July.
The original plan was May, which we have obviously passed. Now almost halfway through June, July is looking quite likely.
Back in February this year, Altman posted on X outlining a roadmap for future updates. At this time, it was suggested that GPT-5 would be made available to all ChatGPT users, including those on a free plan. Responding to a comment, Altman also said the model would be here in “weeks/months”.
As we mentioned above though, OpenAI is known for its delays. For now, we can all simply hope for a release date in the near future.
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