Since GPT-2 declined five years ago, Openai’s first release is not one, but two open volumes of AI reasoning models – now available for free download when embracing faces.
The new Openai Open-Weight model is called “the most advanced”, announced Tuesday in a company blog post. Openai said they “have outstripped the size of open models in reasoning, performed well in tool use, and were optimized to be deployed effectively on consumer hardware.”
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There are two versions:
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gpt-oss-1220ba larger, more powerful model that can run on a single NVIDIA GPU.
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GPT-oss-20bThis is a lightweight alternative designed to run on a consumer laptop with only 16GB of RAM.
To try out the new OpenAI model yourself, head to the OpenAi GPT-Ops page.
What does it mean to be open to weight?
This version is a tribute to the early roots of Openai, when the company was more openly committed to open models (hence the company’s name). Although these are not the strictest “fully open source” (excluding training data), they are Open weightwhich means that the code and model parameters are available for anyone to use, tweak and build.
Mixable light speed
No, models like Meta’s Llama aren’t really open source either – at least not by open source community standards, which requires access to training data as a benchmark.
Since the release of GPT-2, OpenAI has steadily turned to a more closed and proprietary approach to its LLM development – so far. The recently released open weight model marks a significant change in direction and does not occur in a vacuum.
As China’s DeepSeek AI and other labs in the country earn impressive scores on benchmarking, the pressure to remain competitive in the global AI competition has been under pressure. In fact, just last month, the Trump administration urged U.S. AI developers to open source more technology to promote innovation that aligns with “American Value” and maintains strategic advantages.
Regardless of the motivation behind it, this move represents an important step forward, not only for Openai, but for the wider open AI ecosystem.
Disclosure: Mashable’s parent company Ziff Davis filed a lawsuit against Openai in April, accusing it of infringing on Ziff Davis’ copyright in training and operating its AI systems.
