OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said China’s open-source models drove the company to release its open-weight models earlier this month.
“It was clear that if we didn’t do it, the world was gonna be mostly built on Chinese open-source models,” Altman said during a media briefing CNBC reported on Monday.
“That was a factor in our decision, for sure. Wasn’t the only one, but that loomed large,” he added.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
OpenAI released two open-weight models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, on August 5. The former is designed for high-end computers, while the latter is meant to be run on “most desktops and laptops.”
The launch marked the first time OpenAI published an open-weight model since the release of GPT-2 in 2019. Unlike “closed” models, users can run and fine-tune an “open-weight” model locally. GPT-3, GPT-4, and the brand new GPT-5 are all closed models.
Altman said in an X post on August 5 that OpenAI believes gpt-oss to be the “best and most usable open model in the world.”
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The OpenAI CEO said that releasing the models aligned with OpenAI’s mission “to ensure AGI that benefits all of humanity.” AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to a theoretical form of AI that can think and reason like humans.
“To that end, we are excited for the world to be building on an open AI stack created in the United States, based on democratic values, available for free to all and for wide benefit,” he wrote in his X post.
To be sure, OpenAI isn’t the only American tech company that has made its models open. Social media giant Meta’s Llama models are also open-weight, though its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in an essay last month that Meta will need to be “careful about what we choose to open source.”
In January, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stunned the world with its high-performing but relatively cheaper R1 model. R1 is an open-source and open-weight model. President Donald Trump told GOP lawmakers then that he saw DeepSeek’s success as a “positive” and a “wake-up call” for American tech companies.
During a Reddit AMA in January, Altman said that OpenAI would follow DeepSeek’s lead and release its model weights as well.
“I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy,” he said.