OpenAI plans to launch new powerful AI model 'Orion' by December: Report

SAN FRANCISCO: ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly planning to launch its next AI model called ‘Orion’ in December this year which is potentially up to 100 times more powerful than GPT-4.

According to a report in The Verge, unlike the release of OpenAI’s last two models — GPT-4o and o1 — Orion won’t initially be released widely through ChatGPT.

The report mentioned, citing sources, that the Sam Altman-run AI company is planning to grant access to companies first, in order to help them build their own products and features.

OpenAI or its CEO Altman were yet to react to the report.

According to the report, Microsoft is “preparing to host Orion on Azure as early as November”. Microsoft also declined to comment.

“The company’s goal is to combine its LLMs over time to create an even more capable model that could eventually be called artificial general intelligence, or AGI,” the report mentioned.

The release of Orion comes as OpenAI, which has secured a historic $6.6 billion funding at a $157 billion valuation, is restructuring itself as a for-profit entity.

Last month, three top executives — including Chief Technical Officer Mira Murati — left the ChatGPT developer. Of the 13 people who helped found OpenAI in 2015, only three now remain at the company.

According to reports, Murati is raising money from venture capitalists to finance her own AI startup.

The new funding in OpenAI was led by previous investor Thrive Capital. The VC firm invested around $1.3 billion. Microsoft reportedly invested a little less than $1 billion, while Nvidia pledged $100 million and SoftBank reportedly put in $500 million.

“The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems,” the company wrote in a blog post.