OpenAI is once again doing side quests in the lead up to the launch of GPT-5. As we wait for the big update, OpenAI is pausing to bring us not one, but two entirely separate models to play with.
Both of these new models are available to download for free to anyone with some coding ability via Hugging Face.
They come in two sizes, with the larger option being the more capable gpt-oss-120b model that can run on just one single Nvidia GPU, and a second smaller model, called gpt-oss-20b. This one can run on a consumer laptop with 16GB of memory.
This is the first time OpenAI has launched an open weight model in years, and has been delaying its release for a while now. While smaller AI companies like Le Chat, Deepseek, and Alibaba have frequently released open-weight models, OpenAI has tended to keep their doors closed off.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said at the start of the year that OpenAI felt it was on the wrong side of history for this, suggesting they would be going back to launching some open-source model
What are open-weight models?
Quite simply, an open-weight model is one where all of its training parameters are made publicly available. Developers can access these, analyzing and fine tuning them for their own projects.
In such a competitive market, it seems strange for this to be a thing. And yet, it is a very popular option, with some of the most powerful models on the market being open-weighted.
Of course, GPT-5 won’t be, neither would the likes of Grok and Claude’s top models. But that isn’t to say that this new option from OpenAI isn’t powerful.
When put through tests, OpenAI’s two new models both performed ahead of Deepseek’s R1 and in a similar line to some of OpenAI’s other reasoning models.
In both models, the full chain of thought can be accessed, making for easier debugging of code and higher trust in the models.
What does this mean for you?
If you’re a developer in the AI space, this will be big news for you. OpenAI took a long break from offering out its weights available to the public, and there is a clear shift in their thinking for this to become available.
For everybody else, this won’t be of much importance. The big update for the average person will be GPT-5 when that launches in the next week or so.
OpenAI did promise a lot of big updates in the next few weeks, with this just being the starter for the main course soon to come.
