OpenAI has been cleared to release its most advanced model widely, after the US government signed off on a broader rollout of GPT-5.6 that had been held back for weeks under Washington’s new oversight regime for frontier AI.
Until now the model had been available only through a restricted preview to about 20 partners whose names were individually approved by the US government. That arrangement, the first of its kind for an American frontier model, is what the wider release now supersedes.
The sign-off followed additional testing by the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the body set up to vet advanced systems. OpenAI sent technical experts to Washington to answer the agency’s questions, according to Axios.
GPT-5.6 is a three-tier family rather than a single model. Sol is the flagship, Terra a lower-cost mid-tier option, and Luna the fastest and cheapest of the three.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!OpenAI has described Sol as strong at coding, biology and cybersecurity, and paired it with a “max reasoning effort” mode that gives the model more time to work through hard problems. Those same capabilities, particularly in biology and cyber, are part of why the government wanted a closer look before a wide release.
