When you purchase through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

OpenAI will introduce Orion, its next-generation AI model, in December, reports The Vergeciting its sources with knowledge of the matter. However, initial access will be limited to key partner companies instead of a broad release via ChatGPT.com to the general public. The new model is expected to be a complete version rather than an improved or specialized version of an existing one.

Orion is seen internally as a successor to GPT-4, although it is unclear if its official name will be GPT-5 when released. An OpenAI executive has reportedly suggested that Orion could be up to 100 times more powerful than GPT-4, Open AI’s flagship model. Unlike the recently released o1 model, designed for enhanced reasoning and aimed at applications such as scientific problem solving, data analysis and structured knowledge tasks, Orion is aimed at broader AI capabilities for the general public.

For now, OpenAI plans to keep AI models with enhanced reasoning and AI models with broader capabilities separate, but eventually they will merge as the company works on artificial general intelligence (AGI). Nevertheless, Orion’s training involved synthetic data generated by o1, known internally as Strawberry.

According to The Verge, engineers at Microsoft Azure, OpenAI’s cloud service provider, are getting ready to launch Orion on the Azure platform, possibly starting in November.

Earlier this year, a source told The Verge that OpenAI researchers held a happy hour event in September to celebrate the new model’s completion of the training phase. Around the same time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, posted an X message about the winter constellation in the US Midwest. Curiously, The Verge tried to ask the o1 AI model to decipher what Sam Altman’s post means, and it came up with the answer that it hides the word ‘Orion’. Yet, when yours truly asked to do the same, it responded that the message hides the phrase “It Begins.” Nonetheless, all AI models responded that the post could hint at a major announcement.

The timing of Orion’s release is critical for OpenAI, coinciding with the organization’s transition to a for-profit entity. Perhaps that’s why the company is focusing on disclosing it to partners rather than the public first. This change comes from the most recent funding round that brought in $6.6 billion.