OpenAI News & Updates
Last updated October 28, 2026
OpenAI opens a waitlist for $125-per-month Premium ChatGPT Business seats carrying 5x the usage of the $25 Standard tier
OpenAI buys back $7B of employee stock itself instead of tapping outside investors, at a flat $852B valuation before its IPO
OpenAI’s Brad Lightcap leaves after eight years to start a new venture, the latest senior exit ahead of the company’s IPO
OpenAI draws a 30-student sit-in from Sunrise Movement and QuitGPT at its new DC lobbying office, and police arrest 13
OpenAI launches a ChatGPT desktop app for Linux with support for Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora, a month behind Anthropic’s Claude
Google’s Gemini app passes 1 billion monthly users, its fastest-growing product ever, three months behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT
OpenAI acquires NextSlide, an AI presentation startup founded by Caper AI co-founder Ahmed Beshry, and puts its team on ChatGPT
OpenAI turns on ChatGPT ads in Brazil and Mexico and defines sponsored agents in its updated advertising policy document
Meta launches Muse Code, its first coding agent, and competes with Anthropic and OpenAI on price rather than capability
OpenAI spends three million GPU hours investigating its rogue agents, a cleanup worth $4 million to $15 million in compute
OpenAI’s first device is a doughnut-shaped smart speaker the size of a hockey puck with moving parts and a $300 to $400 price
OpenAI adds product carousels to ChatGPT ads, putting several items from a single retailer into one shoppable placement
SoftBank borrows $10B against its OpenAI shares to pay for more OpenAI shares, taking its total stake to $64B by October
OpenAI buys chip patents from Rain AI months after passing on an acquisition and on hiring the Altman-backed startup’s staff
Sequoia Capital chases AI deals at valuations it once rejected under new leaders after missing OpenAI and Anthropic stakes
OpenAI moves to dismiss Apple’s trade secrets suit, arguing Apple’s own iCloud and offboarding practices undercut the claim
OpenAI connects ChatGPT ads to AppsFlyer, giving advertisers a way to measure app installs, purchases, and subscriptions
Apple asks the court to bar OpenAI from using its trade secrets as OpenAI publishes messages it says undercut the case
Attorneys general from 15 states order OpenAI to preserve every record tied to the Hugging Face breach by its GPT-5.6 Sol agent
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