A Call for Strategic Compute Capacity

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A Call for Strategic Compute Capacity

A strategic reserve for the AI Age

May 27, 2026

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[Data] 1 million public-sector seats – and a bigger shift

OpenAI has crossed the milestone of more than 1 million public-sector subscriptions or “seats.” These users span every level of government: from federal agencies and the national labs, to states including Alaska, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, and cities like Austin and Fresno. A majority of these 1 million seats are being provided at essentially no cost.

This milestone reflects something bigger than growth – it signals how AI is becoming core infrastructure that institutions rely on to do their work.

Throughout history, foundational technologies have expanded access to essential capabilities: electricity brought power everywhere, the internet connected people and information, cloud computing made computing resources available on demand. AI is becoming the next layer of infrastructure, making intelligence available to people, businesses, and institutions wherever and whenever they need it. With nearly 1 billion people already using our products regularly, OpenAI’s job is to make that intelligence cheaper, better, and more abundant over time so more people can build, solve problems, and expand what they’re able to do.

One of the clearest examples of this shift is in government.

Across the country, public servants are using AI to help them work faster (in Pennsylvania state government, saving 95 minutes per day), more accurately, and more effectively on behalf of the people they serve. Teams are summarizing complex documents, streamlining administrative processes, drafting communications, analyzing information, and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks. That means more time focused on delivering services, solving problems, and helping people.

When governments work better, citizens benefit. Faster responses, more efficient services, and more productive public-sector teams ultimately translate into better outcomes for the people who rely on them.

We believe intelligence should be as accessible and dependable as other foundational utilities: available to people, businesses, and institutions whenever they need it. Reaching 1 million public-sector seats is an important milestone, not simply because of the number itself, but because it reflects a broader transition already underway. AI is becoming part of the infrastructure that helps societies operate – and one of the most important ways that infrastructure creates value is by helping governments better serve their citizens.

(Editors’ Note: We updated this item, adding how a majority of the 1 million public-sector seats are being provided at essentially no cost.)

[Policy] America needs strategic compute capacity

In the last century, oil became a strategic resource – so essential to national security and global power that the United States created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to guard against supply shocks and geopolitical coercion.

In the Intelligence Age, compute is beginning to play a similar role.

This week, OpenAI sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging the federal government to address America’s strategic compute shortage as a matter of national security and democratic AI leadership. The core argument: frontier AI systems are becoming strategic assets. They can accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen cyber defense, enhance national decision-making, and shape the balance of global power. But those capabilities only matter if the government can actually deploy them when and where they are needed.

That requires strategic compute – a dedicated, ready supply of the specialized chips, data centers, energy infrastructure, and technical operators needed to run frontier AI systems securely, reliably, and at scale.

The challenge is timing. Frontier models are improving on the scale of months. New compute infrastructure takes much longer to build. That mismatch creates a national-security gap.

Strategic compute is the bridge between frontier capability and government adoption. Like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, it would give the United States assured access to a critical resource when national security and public purpose demand it.

There is already an example of why this matters. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s Venado supercomputer enabled researchers to run OpenAI’s then-frontier o3 reasoning model to accelerate national-security research. Because that capacity was already in place, LANL could securely access frontier AI capability when it became available.

Such examples should be more rule than exception, and that can only happen if the government invests more deeply in expanding its compute capacity.

Cybersecurity shows the urgency. From one model generation to the next, we have seen a sharp jump in frontier systems’ ability both to threaten critical infrastructure and to help defend it. Through OpenAI Daybreak and the Trusted Access for Cyber program, OpenAI is working to get advanced defensive models into the hands of entities with verified cyber-defense responsibilities, equipping defenders before adversaries and criminals can exploit the same advances.

But access to models is not enough. Defenders also need the secure compute to run them.

The United States leads in frontier AI today. But that lead cannot be taken for granted. Strategic compute would help ensure America can deploy AI in service of its security and values, protecting citizens and critical infrastructure at home, while supporting allies and partners abroad as they build on AI systems grounded in democratic principles.

[News] Election integrity in the AI era

Today, we’re announcing our election-year safeguards as 2026 becomes the second major global election cycle of the generative AI era. The backdrop is different from 2024: AI tools are more powerful, more widely used, and increasingly embedded in how people search for information, create content, and engage politically online.

Our approach centers on five priorities:

We’re also taking several concrete steps. Beginning this fall in the United States and Brazil, ChatGPT is providing live election-night vote counts from The Associated Press. In the US, we’re also partnering with Democracy Works to surface trusted information about voter registration, polling locations, and election logistics.

On the security side, we’re extending cyber-defense tools to registered voting-system manufacturers and briefing election officials on new defensive AI capabilities. And we’re unveiling new provenance efforts designed to help people identify AI-generated images, including SynthID watermarking and a public verification tool tied to the C2PA standard.

We also used our announcement to repeat our red lines when it comes to AI and election: no political advertising on ChatGPT this cycle, no deceptive AI-generated political content, and no automated persuasion campaigns at scale.

Our main message: AI systems should help people participate in civic life with better information, stronger safeguards, and greater transparency, while giving users the freedom to explore political ideas without manipulation or hidden bias.

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Graphics created by Base Three using ChatGPT.