The company said Astra is the first model it has designated "Critical" under its Preparedness Framework, capable of finding and exploiting unknown security flaws without human guidance

OpenAI says Astra is considerably more capable at cyber tasks than GPT-5.6 Sol. Following the Hugging Face incident, it is being especially cautious about releasing it.

The company will give select partners early access to its Astra AI model—so they have time to shore up their defenses.