Openai launches GPT-5, its most powerful AI to date. Will it be enough to stay in advance in the ruthless race today?

But 2025 sparked a ruthless race for the domination of the AI, and Openai struggled to remain the undeniable pacesetter in an increasing field of rivals which develop advanced LLM models. On Thursday, Openai made a major step in its efforts to reaffirm its leadership with the launch of GPT-5, the long-awaited update of its flagship AI and its most powerful and fastest model to date.

The company has declared that the model offers “more precise answers than any model of previous reasoning” and is “much smarter in all areas”, reflected by strong performance on academic references and evaluated by humans. His research blog noted new advanced performances through mathematics, coding and health issues, and revealed that GPT-5 has surpassed other OpenAi models through tasks covering more than 40 professions, including law, logistics, sales and engineering. In addition, it is presented as “a unified system” which provides “the best answer, each time”, without having to choose from what became a laundry list of different Openai models.

“GPT-5 really wants to talk to a doctoral expert expert in any subject,” the CEO of Openai said on Wednesday, Sam Altman. “Something like GPT-5 would be almost unimaginable at any other moment in history.”

Altman described the GPT-5 as an “important step” on the path of artificial general intelligence (AGA), which, according to OpenAi’s mission statement, is defined as “highly autonomous systems that surpass humans to the most economically precious work”.

OPENAI makes its latest AI model for all Chatgpt users – first free users will have access to one of its reasoning models – as well as through an API that allows developers and businesses to develop it. OPENAI also deploys new chatgpt features: users can choose from four predefined personalities – characteristics, robot, earpiece and nerd – to personalize how AI responds, while professional users will soon be able to connect Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts, allowing Chatgpt to reference this information automatically during discussions. Vocal mode also gets an upgrade, with more adaptive and expressive responses.

It is not clear if this combination of speed, power and functionalities will however be sufficient. Some two years in manufacturing (GPT-4 was launched in March 2023), the launch of the GPT-5 took more time than many initiates in the industry did not plan, because Openai adjusted its approach in response to industry changes. And although Chatgpt now has an impressive 700 million weekly users, Openai has faced increasing pressure in the past year while its rivals have poached its talent and continue on emerging AI techniques such as long context and the use of autonomous tools. In addition to major technological competitors like Meta and Google, Openai is due to face a wave of startups founded by its own researchers, including anthropogenic machines, thinking machines and a sure support. The meta of Mark Zuckerberg has become a particularly aggressive rival, forming a new superintelligence team which attracted several best scientists from the OpenAi. And in January, the Chinese by parish Deepseek briefly overturned Openai on his heels – partly of a growing flow of powerful Chinese models in the running for global influence.

The fact that GPT-5 propels Openai at the top of the Hill AI will become clear in the days and weeks in advance, because the researchers put the model to the test, testing it against other elite models, including the latest version of Anthropic by Claude and Google’s Gemini.

Openai pushes to stay in the lead

One of the decisive truths about the generating AI world is that even when you are at the top, the advance does not last long. Now that GPT-5 has been released, the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman, has admitted that staying on the border means one thing: an implacable scaling.

In AI, scaling refers to the idea that models become more powerful as you increase the amount of data, calculation power and model components used during training. This is the underlying principle that has led to progress from GPT-2 to GPT-3 to GPT-4-and now GPT-5. The capture is that each leap requires exponentially more investments

When asked if the scaling laws were still held, Altman said they were doing it “absolutely”. He stressed that better models, smarter architectures, better quality data and much more computing power, because the path of “order of grandeur” improvements is still to come.

But this kind of progress has a cost. “This will take a control amount of calculation,” he admitted. “But we intend to continue to do so.”

Current confidence, but defies in advance

OPENAI approached its income in the first seven months of 2025, reaching an annualized execution rate of $ 12 billion, against around $ 6 billion at the start of the year, according to a recent information report. This translates into $ 1 billion in monthly income, fueled by demand for demand for its chatgpt products on consumer and companies markets. Weekly chatgpt active users jumped at around 700 million, compared to 500 million from all OPENAI products at the end of March. And earlier this week, Openai published a free and open source model-an unusual decision for an company often criticized for its closed approach during the last half-receiver, which maintains that its premium offer, which is now GPT-5, will continue to dominate.

However, there are a lot of challenges to come. On the one hand, the partnership between Microsoft and Openai – which started with an investment of $ 1 billion in 2019 – entered a heavier and more complex phase. While Microsoft has invested more than $ 13 billion and retains exclusive rights to OPENAI models via Azure, tensions have appeared on income sharing, AG control clauses and overlapping products.

OPENAI also sails to transform its commercial arm into a public service company (PBC) while ensuring that its original non -profit organization maintains control. There have been significant legal and public reactions to his efforts, including a trial of the Elon Musk co -founder and the examination of the State Attorney General in California and Delaware. In addition, Openai faces broader regulatory attention because it rethinks its governance structure – on issues on the protection of charity assets, responsibility for benefits and compliance with state non -profit laws.