What Does Sam Altman’s “Code Red” With ChatGPT Say About OpenAI’s Future Progress?
As we’ve seen throughout the year, tech CEOs aren’t exactly shy about making big, dramatic statements to get their point across. Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, and even Marc Benioff – the industry is full of leaders seemingly willing to exaggerate for the sake of good marketing or a punchy headline. At this point, it’s almost part of the game.
No culprit, in my opinion, is as guilty of this as OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, who just can’t keep himself out of the limelight – even in Google’s shining moment. Gemini 3 was recently launched, receiving plaudits across the tech ecosystem and landing itself as the best LLM across almost every category, according to LMArena. It’s also led to OpenAI losing 6% of its customers.
In response, Altman has declared that OpenAI is in “code red” and that all hands must be on deck going forward, so ChatGPT can regain its spot at the top. Which, subsequently, means halting their current efforts in other business areas, such as the development of agentic AI. Given our recent discussion around the saturated AI agent market for customers, this announcement comes at a time when some – including Salesforce – might benefit from OpenAI’s recent business pivot.
OpenAI Is on the Back Foot and Must Act Fast
Now, you probably already have a sense of what a “code red” is. It’s basically the same thing we see in pop culture. OpenAI has hit the panic button, and the message internally seems to be to drop everything and double down on ChatGPT so they can slow Gemini 3’s momentum.
Ironically, Google conducted its own “code red” when ChatGPT launched three years ago, worried it might threaten the core of Google Search. Now, the roles are reversed.
According to The Information, Altman told staff in a Slack memo on Monday that more employees will be redirected toward improving ChatGPT, especially around personalization for the 800 million people who use it weekly. That includes allowing each user to customize how the chatbot behaves.
He also outlined a few other priorities, such as improving “model behavior” so people prefer OpenAI’s models over competitors’ (including in public benchmarks like LMArena), making ChatGPT faster and more reliable, and reducing “overrefusals” – cases where ChatGPT unnecessarily declines to answer harmless questions.
But the mood around OpenAI feels a little more turbulent than just a routine reshuffle. Experts have argued that the company has stretched itself too thin and spent billions only to find itself sitting in second place. For all the money they’ve raised, they’ve burned through a comparable amount, and if they can’t regain momentum heading into next year, investors may start getting uneasy.
This is where things get interesting for agentic AI. Pausing or slowing OpenAI’s work on agents opens the door for others, and Salesforce is very much trying to walk through it. As we’ve discussed, the AI agent market is saturated with lookalike offerings, which has caused buyers to hesitate. But OpenAI stepping back, even temporarily, shifts the dynamic a bit. Can the general-purpose AI giants really keep up across every category?
Salesforce, at least, has an advantage. Agentforce is a core focus, and they have the customer data moat to anchor adoption. That said, uptake has been slower than expected, thanks to skepticism and the lure of alternatives.
But OpenAI’s redirected attention could genuinely reshape the landscape going into 2026. This might be the first clear sign that broad AI companies can’t prioritize everything at once, leaving space for more specialized players to lead in agentic AI while others are distracted.
And that leads to a simple question – if OpenAI isn’t fully focused on agents right now… why would a customer choose them over Salesforce? Whether Salesforce decides to push that narrative is another story, but it’s certainly an opportunity.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, this moment feels like a reminder that AI isn’t a straight race to the top and is more of a series of pivots, resets, and reshuffles as the market matures.
Whether OpenAI’s “code red” becomes a genuine turning point or just a temporary wobble, the next year will tell us a lot about who’s truly built to lead the agentic AI era.
