OpenAI's "Rough Vibes": Altman Admits Company Is Playing Catch-Up to Google and Anthropic

Sam Altman just said the quiet part out loud: OpenAI is no longer the undisputed leader in AI.

In a leaked internal memo, the OpenAI CEO used the phrase "rough vibes" to describe the company's current position as Google's Gemini 3 Pro and Anthropic's Claude close the capability gap, particularly in coding-heavy and pretraining-intensive models. His assessment was stark: OpenAI is "catching up fast"—an admission that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

This is the sound of a market leader realizing the competition just got real.

The Revenue Reality Check

Beyond the technical anxiety, Altman delivered sobering financial news. OpenAI expects revenue growth to slow dramatically to just 5-10% by 2026—a massive deceleration from the triple-digit gains that defined the company's ChatGPT-fueled ascent.

The culprits? Softer enterprise demand and a cooling AI hype cycle.

Translation: Enterprises are moving from "buy everything AI" to "prove the ROI." The land-grab phase is over. Now comes the hard part—demonstrating actual business value at scale.

For a company that's been riding momentum as its primary competitive advantage, this slowdown represents a fundamental shift. OpenAI can no longer rely on being first to market or dominating mindshare. They need to compete on technical merit, enterprise features, and total cost of ownership against rivals who've spent the last year learning from OpenAI's mistakes.

The Technical Scramble

Altman's memo pointed specifically to the Shallotpeat LLM project as OpenAI's answer to the competitive threat. The model aims to fix pretraining glitches, streamline research workflows, and maintain technical leadership in areas where Google and Anthropic have made significant gains.

But here's what matters: OpenAI is now in reactive mode. They're responding to competitor moves rather than defining the market. Google's Gemini 3 Pro has demonstrated superior performance on certain coding benchmarks. Anthropic's Claude has won enterprise customers with better safety guarantees and more predictable behavior.

The gap hasn't closed entirely—OpenAI still holds advantages in brand recognition, developer ecosystem, and deployment scale. But the technical moat is narrowing, and fast.

Security Theater or Real Threat?

Adding to the turbulence, OpenAI temporarily locked down its San Francisco offices after a former Stop AI activist, previously on-site, was flagged for possible threats. Police were called. Employees were instructed to avoid wearing company logos in public.

Stop AI publicly distanced itself from the individual, but the incident reveals the security vulnerabilities facing high-profile AI companies. Whether the threat was credible or overblown, the optics are terrible—a company simultaneously worried about external activists and internal morale.

The logo instruction is particularly telling. When you're asking employees to hide their affiliation with your company, you've got culture problems that extend well beyond competitive positioning.

The Product Push Continues

Despite the internal anxiety, OpenAI continues shipping features designed to maintain developer and consumer engagement.

ChatGPT with GPT-5.1 now pulls in more web images for people, places, and products across web, iOS, and Android. U.S. users on Free, Plus, and Pro plans can purchase directly via Shopify Instant Checkout, including brands like Spanx, Skims, and Glossier.

The e-commerce integration is smart—it creates revenue opportunities beyond API fees and subscription plans. But it also signals diversification anxiety. When you're integrating shopping features into your AI assistant, you're hedging against the possibility that being "just" an AI platform won't be enough.

The Developer Migration Ultimatum

The most aggressive move: OpenAI announced API access to GPT-4o will terminate February 16, 2026. Developers must migrate to GPT-5.1, which offers larger context windows, advanced reasoning modes, higher throughput, and lower input costs.

The forced migration makes technical sense—GPT-5.1 is objectively better on multiple dimensions. But the compressed timeline reveals urgency. OpenAI needs everyone on their latest model, both to reduce infrastructure costs and to demonstrate adoption momentum to investors and enterprise customers.

For developers, it's another reminder that building on OpenAI's platform carries real vendor lock-in risk. When your production applications depend on API endpoints that can be deprecated with a few months' notice, you're exposed.

What "Rough Vibes" Actually Means

Altman's choice of language—"rough vibes"—is revealing. This isn't a polished investor presentation or carefully crafted PR statement. It's internal communication that leaked, which means it reflects what OpenAI's leadership actually believes, not what they want the market to hear.

The vibe shift is real:

• Technical leadership is contested. Google and Anthropic are competitive on capability, not just hype.
• Revenue growth is normalizing. The exponential curve is flattening to enterprise SaaS levels.
• Security concerns are mounting. Both physical threats and digital safety questions.
• Employee confidence needs shoring up. You don't write memos about "catching up fast" if morale is strong.

The Strategic Implications

For marketing professionals and growth leaders evaluating AI vendors, this moment matters.

OpenAI is no longer the safe default choice. They're one option among several, each with distinct advantages. Google offers better integration with enterprise infrastructure. Anthropic delivers more predictable, safety-focused behavior. Smaller players like Deepgram excel in specific domains like voice AI.

The vendor landscape is fragmenting, and that's healthy. Monopolies breed complacency. Competition drives innovation.

But it also means procurement decisions just got more complex. You can't just "buy OpenAI" and assume you're covered. You need to evaluate which models work best for which workloads, build abstraction layers to enable multi-vendor strategies, and plan for a future where no single provider dominates.

The February Deadline

The GPT-4o deprecation deadline—February 16, 2026—serves as a useful marker. By that date, we'll know whether OpenAI successfully defended its position or whether Google and Anthropic captured meaningful market share.

We'll also know whether enterprises actually care about technical superiority or whether brand, ecosystem, and switching costs matter more. My bet: it's the latter. Most companies will migrate to GPT-5.1 not because it's better, but because moving to a different vendor entirely is harder.

But the developers who do switch will remember that OpenAI forced their hand. And they'll build vendor-agnostic architectures next time.

Rough Vibes

"Rough vibes" is corporate understatement. OpenAI faces real competitive pressure for the first time since ChatGPT's launch. Revenue growth is slowing. Technical differentiation is shrinking. Security concerns are escalating. And the CEO is telling employees they need to "catch up fast."

This doesn't mean OpenAI is failing. They remain the market leader by most metrics. But they're no longer inevitable.

The AI market just got interesting again.

If you're navigating multi-vendor AI strategies and need guidance on building resilient infrastructure that doesn't depend on any single platform, Winsome Marketing's team can help you architect for flexibility while maximizing AI value.