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OpenAI Cleared To Launch GPT-5.6 Publicly After Government Review
The Trump administration’s 30-day review lasted barely two weeks, and OpenAI says it doesn’t want the review process to become the default.
OpenAI will release all three GPT-5.6 variants — Sol, Terra, and Luna — to the public on Thursday, July 9, ending a staggered debut shaped by a new US government review process. “We’re expanding preview access globally now,” the company announced on X.
The model series launched in late June to a “small group of trusted partners,” a restriction stemming from President Trump’s AI cybersecurity order signed in early June, which asks companies to voluntarily submit their most powerful models for government review 30 days before public release. OpenAI complied, though not happily. “We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” it said at the time, adding that cooperation was the fastest route to a public launch.
The review wrapped up well short of 30 days. According to Axios, the administration cleared the wider release after the Department of Commerce’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation ran additional tests, with OpenAI sending technical experts to Washington to field questions and concerns directly.
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Of the three variants, Sol is the company’s strongest model to date, priced at $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output. Terra, built for everyday use, promises performance comparable to GPT-5.5 at half the cost — $2.50 per million input and $15 for output — while Luna, the cheapest of the trio, runs $1 per million input and $6 for output.
OpenAI is not the only lab navigating the new regime. Anthropic was ordered to block foreign nationals from its Mythos and Fable models, and has since won permission to redeploy them.