OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to journalists after meeting with U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Capitol in Washington, DC, June 3, 2026.
Brendan Smialowski AFP | Getty Images
OpenAI announced it will make GPT-5.6’s Sol, Terra, and Luna models publicly available on Thursday, about two weeks after the artificial intelligence company limited the release to a “small group of trusted partners” at the request of the U.S. government.
“Happy Architecture,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post to X late Tuesday.
OpenAI announced the model in June and initially agreed to release it to a select group of organizations whose “participation is shared with the government,” according to a blog post. The company said it believes in “broad access” and will work to make the model more widely available in the coming weeks.
“We do not believe this type of government access process should become the long-term default,” OpenAI said at the time. “We secure the best tools from the users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them.”
The public release of GPT-5.6 models comes after OpenAI’s main rival Anthropic regained access to its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after weeks of conflict with governments. human The company had to disable access to the model to comply with an export control directive, but the U.S. Department of Commerce lifted that directive late last month.
Since President Donald Trump signed the AI Executive Order in June, the Trump administration has taken a more active role in AI adoption. The order requires AI model developers to voluntarily provide their cutting-edge models to the government to evaluate their capabilities prior to full release, and federal agencies have 60 days to develop evaluation processes.
OpenAI said in June that it was working with governments to help establish a framework for such evaluations and develop “a repeatable process for future model releases.”
The company said in a blog post that GPT-5.6 Sol is its “most powerful model to date,” with greater capabilities across coding, biology, and cybersecurity.
OpenAI said in a post on X late Tuesday that it would expand preview access to GPT-5.6 models globally.
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