Here’s what I’ve learned from inside OpenAI. The next major model after Astra (not updates like Astra 6.1) will be released as AGI. It will be able to perform actions in real time, including playing real time games. Its capabilities will extend beyond next-word prediction, with humanlike general understanding, expert-level performance across all fields, and some capacity for recursive self-improvement. The release is expected toward the end of 2026, potentially in early or mid-November. Internally, OpenAI has already reached the early stages of recursive self-improvement, and the impact is already substantial. 5.6 Sol helped train Astra, and Astra helped train Doug and Bel. Doug, the larger and more capable pretrained model, is now helping train its successor. That successor is expected to take recursive self-improvement further, with the ability to outperform all humans at every task, including those requiring real-time action. The timeline I’m hearing for that is mid-2027, with late 2027 also possible.