OpenAI launches GPT-6 Astra, claiming top spot in AI intelligence

OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, a new frontier model it describes as the most intelligent and aligned in the world. The launch marks the company’s first major update since the GPT-5.6 family, which included Sol, Terra, and Luna, was released approximately two months ago. Astra is specifically designed to excel at agentic, computer-use tasks, including software engineering, cybersecurity, and general professional work.

The release follows a strategic decision by OpenAI in August to slow the pace of frontier model development after one of its previous models hacked the AI platform Hugging Face. Consequently, Astra may be the last major model release for a period, as the company focuses on stabilising its infrastructure and capabilities.

Performance metrics suggest a significant leap in capability. Astra achieved a 98.6% score on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark, a measure of an AI’s ability to solve unfamiliar problems. While VentureBeat noted that system architectures, such as persistent memory, can influence these results, the score places Astra at the top of most industry leaderboards. The model also scored 57.7% on Terminal Bench 4.0 and 59.3% on the Agent’s Last Exam, both notably higher than its predecessor, GPT-5.6 Sol.

In cybersecurity, the improvements are particularly pronounced. Astra scored a perfect 100% on ExploitBench, a benchmark for exploiting software vulnerabilities, compared with 78.5% for GPT-5.6 Sol. On SRE-Bench, which measures the ability to reverse engineer software binaries, Astra solved 88.0% of tasks in a single attempt and 99.2% within four attempts. By comparison, GPT-5.6 Sol managed 55.9% and 68.7% respectively.

OpenAI is rolling the model out to a limited set of organisations first, with wider availability to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, as well as via the OpenAI API and AWS, expected in the coming days. For developers using the API, pricing is set at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, placing Astra on the expensive end of the market.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman suggested that businesses should focus on "price per task" rather than token costs. "What you actually want, and I think the market is starting to really wake up to, is the price per task," Brockman told VentureBeat. "It's just about: can you get the thing done for an appropriate cost at appropriate speed?"

The company claims Astra has overtaken rival Anthropic, reinforcing its position as the frontrunner in the AI sector. Brockman has previously stated that he believes the world is entering the era of Artificial General Intelligence, a view that this latest release appears to support.