OpenAI has introduced two new open-weight AI reasoning models: gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b. This marks the company’s first open language model release since GPT-2. Available for free on Hugging Face under the Apache 2.0 license, these models are optimized to run on standard GPUs and laptops. While they are less powerful and more prone to hallucinations than OpenAI’s proprietary o-series models, they outperform competitor models from DeepSeek and Qwen in benchmarks.
OpenAI trained the models using a combination of mixture-of-experts and reinforcement learning. This release reflects growing competition from China and signals a strategic shift toward greater openness, democratic values, and building trust within the developer community.