Sam Altman says OpenAI will roll out its first open-weight AI model in years

• OpenAI's CEO said it will release its first open-weight AI model since GPT-2, CEO Sam Altman said.
• The open-weight model strikes a middle ground between open-source and proprietary systems.
• On the same day, the company announced it raised $40 billion, including $30 billion from SoftBank.

OpenAI is preparing to roll out its first open-weight language model with advanced reasoning capabilities since releasing GPT-2 in 2019, CEO Sam Altman announced on Monday.

"We've been thinking about this for a long time but other priorities took precedence," Altman said in a post on X. "Now it feels important to do."

"We still have some decisions to make, so we are hosting developer events to gather feedback and later play with early prototypes," he added.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comments and more details.

Open-weight AI models offer a middle ground between open-source and proprietary systems by sharing only the pre-trained parameters of a neural network while keeping critical development details under wraps. This means developers can use the model for inference and fine-tuning, but they won't have access to the training code, original dataset, or specifics on the model's architecture and methodology.

In February, during a Reddit AMA session, Altman said that OpenAI has been "on the wrong side of history" regarding open source and noted that while not everyone at OpenAI shares this perspective, internal discussions are ongoing. The company has generally favored a proprietary, closed-source development approach in the past.

In the same Reddit session, Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer, also said that OpenAI is considering open-sourcing older models that are no longer state-of-the-art.

OpenAI has previously said that DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that has rapidly gained attention with its AI model, R1, has misappropriated its technology through a process known as "distillation," where a smaller AI model learns from a larger one. In contrast to OpenAI's models, DeepSeek is entirely open-source and shows its full chain of thought.

OpenAI has recently released GPT-4.5, known as "Orion," on February 27 and plans to launch GPT-5 in May. The AI giant is also involved in the Stargate Project, a $500 billion initiative to build data centers announced by President Donald Trump.

The company announced on Monday that it had closed the largest private tech funding round on record, including $30 billion from SoftBank and $10 billion from other investors, bringing the company's valuation to $300 billion with the new capital.