As Google gains the lead, Altman detects "rough vibes."

By EngineAI Team | Published on November 27, 2025
As Google gains the lead, Altman detects "rough vibes."
According to The Information, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sent a note to employees last month alerting them to impending "rough vibes" because of Google advancements. This was a sneak peek at the company's internal discomfort following the release of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro by its competitors.

The specifics:

According to Altman, Google's growth may "create temporary economic headwinds for our company," and he anticipates "the vibes out there to be rough for a bit."

OpenAI, which was previously having trouble scaling GPT-5, was particularly concerned about Google's pretraining advancements.

Even if it means falling behind in the short term, he stressed the importance of concentrating on "very ambitious bets," such as automated AI research and synthetic data.

According to The Information, Altman also alluded to an upcoming LLM known as "Shallotpeat" that would enable OpenAI to catch up to Google's advancements.

It's unusual to see Altman and OpenAI following each other, and it seems that the AI leader is finally unable to respond to Google's significant week of releases. However, as we've seen numerous times in the AI race, the mood can quickly shift, particularly with a typically hectic holiday season of upcoming releases.

🔗 External Resource:
Visit Link →