FRONTIER MODELS

There have been deep divisions within the White House on how to handle the releases of these increasingly powerful models, with some officials insisting on a soft touch from government, while others have expressed concerns about their potential impact on security.

The delay in release echoes a similar situation at OpenAI's archrival Anthropic, the startup behind the Claude chatbot.

Last week, Anthropic said it would begin restoring access to its most powerful AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after Washington lifted a restriction on where they could be released.

Before Mythos arrived, President Donald Trump's administration wanted fewer rules on AI companies, not more, hoping that would help the US beat China in the AI race.

The government is now drawing up criteria for which AI models would fall under new security restrictions, in accordance with an executive order from the White House.

OpenAI said in June that "we don't believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default" as it "keeps the best tools" from users, businesses and others who need them.

The company added that it was working with Washington "to develop the cyber Executive Order framework and a repeatable process for future model releases".

OpenAI has said Terra, once broadly available, will be priced at half the cost of its predecessor GPT-5.5, as the company seeks to lock in customers amid fierce competition from Anthropic and Google.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidential IPO documents with US regulators and are targeting public listings at valuations approaching US$1 trillion, raising the commercial stakes of the AI arms race between them.