Prediction markets bet on imminent OpenAI model release despite safety warnings

Prediction market traders are pretty sure OpenAI is cooking, and it's next big AI model could be coming sooner than you might think.

A market for the most likely release date of OpenAI’s upcoming model Astra, the company's internal name for GPT-6, gives a 59% chance of launching by September 15 and roughly 72% by month's end on Polymarket.

That confidence runs against OpenAI's own move earlier this month. On August 7, the company said it had slowed Astra's release, citing cybersecurity risks. OpenAI's own preparedness disclosure was blunter: internal evaluations of Astra showed "significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity," and the company concluded it "cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities" under its safety framework.

A model at OpenAI's Critical threshold could, by the company's own definition, find and build working zero-day exploits across many hardened systems without human help.

The Polymarket odds still lean toward a near-term drop. The Sept. 15 contract shows 59% at about $27,600 in volume; the Sept. 30 contract sits near 72% on $35,600. A separate "which week" market favors an August 31–September 6 window at 39%. OpenAI has no release date, so the contracts resolve on the company's own announcement.

On Myriad, a prediction market maintained by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, the larger odds point to September 30 as the most likely deadline for GPT-6. Myriad traders place 31% odds on the end of September, with only 19% odds on September 15, and the longshot bet of August 21 at just 5% (but rising).

The gap between OpenAI's caution and trader optimism isn't unusual for this beat. Prediction markets hit $2 billion in weekly volume this year as Polymarket's lead widened, and OpenAI launch dates are a recurring favorite. Back in July, odds of a public GPT-6 release by September 30 were at around 78%.

OpenAI's post said Astra "was not involved in exploiting Hugging Face," distancing the model from a recent incident as it weighed how to ship something it says it still can't fully safety-test.