Sam Altman Says Google Gains May Hurt OpenAI Briefly but Pledges Recovery

OpenAI chief Sam Altman has told staff that Google’s recent wins in AI could “create some temporary economic headwinds for our company”, but he also said OpenAI is “catching up fast” and expects to stay competitive.

Worries about slowing growth at OpenAI grew over the summer. On a recent earnings call, CFO Sarah Friar said people are using ChatGPT less than before, even though the company’s revenue picture looks strong in other ways.

Google launched Gemini 3, which it calls “its most capable model yet.” Developers say Gemini 3 did well at automating website and product design and writing code. AI coding tools are an important source of income for OpenAI and rivals such as Anthropic.

Altman’s note made clear that Google and Anthropic are narrowing the lead. Anthropic’s Claude is known for generating code from conversational prompts.

Google has pushed Gemini across search, productivity tools, and other products. OpenAI has also moved to defend its position in coding with updates to its Codex tools.

Altman urged staff to stay focused on long-term work. He wrote: “We have built enough strength as a company to weather great models shipping elsewhere competition, having most of our research team focussed on really getting to superintelligence is critically important.”

He closed his memo with this exact line: “It sucks that we have to do so many hard things at the same time, the best research lab, the best AI infrastructure company, and the best AI platform and product company, but such is our lot in life. And I wouldn’t trade positions with any other company.”