OpenAI will not roll out GPT 5.6 globally right away, but will first share the new model with a small group of partners. The company is doing so at the request of the Trump administration.
The Trump administration is tightening its grip on AI development in the US. OpenAI will not roll out GPT 5.6 globally, in contrast to previous versions of the LLM. Instead, GPT 5.6 will only be shared with a small group of partners at launch.
This is happening at the request of the government. They want a preview period, during which access is approved by the US on a customer-by-customer basis. Only if everything goes well can a global rollout follow a few weeks later.
Not transparent
The US government recently reined in the rollout of Anthropic’s Fable 5 (and Mythos 5). That model was initially released to the general public. After a few days, based on a non-detailed complaint, the government decided that Fable 5 was unsafe after all, but not so unsafe that no one could use it. Anthropic had to restrict access exclusively to US citizens.
Since the company cannot verify who is behind a computer when using Fable 5, it decided to take the model back offline. The entire event was and is shrouded in a lack of transparency, with the most striking aspect being that the rest of the world only gets access to advanced LLMs by the grace of what Trump and his administration decide.
This now seems to be becoming the norm. The process by which customers will gain access to the OpenAI GPT 5.6 preview is unclear. For the time being, the parties involved are also not communicating about how long the preview period will last, or what requirements GPT 5.6 must meet to become publicly available.
IPO
There are also some delays on the financial front. Although OpenAI has confirmed nothing, the chance that the planned IPO will actually take place this year is shrinking. The New York Times reports, based on anonymous sources, that the volatility of SpaceX’s stock has led to second thoughts. It is therefore not unlikely that the IPO will be postponed until 2027.