OpenAI has unveiled two new artificial intelligence models—gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b—which users can download, modify, and run locally. This marks a significant move toward openness as the company faces growing pressure to stay true to its nonprofit roots.
CEO Sam Altman emphasized that OpenAI’s mission, since its founding in 2015, has been to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that benefits all of humanity. The newly launched open-weight models allow full access to their trained parameters, enabling developers to customize the tools for various tasks like internet searches and writing code.
President Greg Brockman described the release as a major milestone, calling it the company’s first open-weight language model release in years. According to OpenAI, the models deliver high performance at low cost and are built to operate efficiently even on personal computers.
The company is already working with partners like France’s Orange and cloud firm Snowflake to test real-world uses. OpenAI says the models are designed with safety in mind, having been tuned to prevent abuse.
Altman also addressed past criticism about the company’s transparency, admitting that OpenAI had previously fallen short. As part of its revised direction, OpenAI will remain under nonprofit governance while still allowing its business arm to earn revenue—an approach meant to balance profit-making with its public mission.