OpenAI began rolling out GPT-5.6 Sol to the general public on Thursday after the Trump administration approved a broad release, ending weeks of restricted access to a small group of government-vetted partners.
Speaking to CNBC, CEO Sam Altman said Sol achieves 54% greater token efficiency on agentic coding tasks, putting it at parity with or ahead of rival models. "Every enterprise now is thinking about spend and the value they're getting in exchange for AI, and this is what we really want to do," Altman said.
GPT-5.6 is a family of three models. Sol is the flagship tier, Terra is a lower-cost option aimed at enterprise workloads, and Luna is the fastest and least expensive of the three, designed for high-volume tasks.
Altman said the approval process involved Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and U.S. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross. He characterized the dynamic as a "collaborative back and forth" in which federal reviewers flagged concerns for OpenAI to resolve. "If you want broad access, which we do, and you have powerful models, you really want to be able to be confident in your safety claims, because otherwise the world is going to get uncomfortable very fast," he said.
The GPT-5.6 rollout had been limited to roughly 20 partners after the Trump administration asked OpenAI to stagger the release while federal agencies evaluated the model. The Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation carried out the evaluation, and OpenAI sent technical staff to Washington to respond to the agency's questions, according to prior reporting. Sol's capabilities in coding, biology, and cybersecurity were among the factors that drew federal scrutiny.
The restricted rollout went beyond a voluntary pre-release review framework President Trump signed on June 2, which called on companies to allow agencies to check powerful AI systems before launch. Where that structure relied on voluntary participation, the GPT-5.6 situation resulted in a government-curated access list — an arrangement Altman told employees OpenAI did not view as a sustainable long-term approach.
The situation drew comparisons to Anthropic's recent experience, in which a Commerce Department export control order forced the company to pull both its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models from general availability. Fable 5 has since been reinstated, but Mythos 5 remains restricted to a narrow set of American organizations, according to prior reporting.
Altman confirmed that discussions with the Trump administration over a potential government equity position remain ongoing.