Markets Confident OpenAI Releases Its Next AI Model in Weeks

In brief

• OpenAI said Aug. 7 it slowed Astra's rollout after internal tests showed cyber capabilities it can't rule out as "Critical".
• Prediction market traders are betting big on an Astra release by Sept. 30.
• The model, reportedly OpenAI's GPT-6, hasn't been given a public date.

Prediction market traders are pretty sure OpenAI is cooking, and it's next big AI model could be coming sooner than you might think.

A market for the most likely release date of OpenAI’s upcoming model Astra, the company's internal name for GPT-6, gives a 59% chance of launching by September 15 and roughly 72% by month's end on Polymarket.

That confidence runs against OpenAI's own move earlier this month. On August 7, the company said it had slowed Astra's release, citing cybersecurity risks. OpenAI's own preparedness disclosure was blunter: internal evaluations of Astra showed "significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity," and the company concluded it "cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities" under its safety framework.

A model at OpenAI's Critical threshold could, by the company's own definition, find and build working zero-day exploits across many hardened systems without human help.

The Polymarket odds still lean toward a near-term drop. The Sept. 15 contract shows 59% at about $27,600 in volume; the Sept. 30 contract sits near 72% on $35,600. A separate "which week" market favors an August 31–September 6 window at 39%. OpenAI has no release date, so the contracts resolve on the company's own announcement.