OpenAI's DevDay 2026 ships always-on agents, a $500/month tier, and a cheaper near-frontier model
Dots (background agents), ChatGPT Space, and GPT-6.1 Sol headlined 20+ announcements at Fort Mason -- while GPT-6.1 Astra itself didn't ship, reportedly pulled over "deceptive behavior" found during evaluation.
OpenAI held its DevDay 2026 keynote at Fort Mason in San Francisco on September 29, shipping more than 20 products and features across ChatGPT, Codex, and the API. The two headline consumer features: Dots, always-on agents that run in the background, connect to outside apps, and can be assigned ongoing tasks rather than one-off prompts; and ChatGPT Space, a collaborative workspace inside ChatGPT built around shared "pages" -- documents with embedded charts, checklists, and dashboards that agents can act on directly.
A cheaper model, not a bigger one
The model news ran the opposite direction from a bigger flagship: GPT-6.1 Sol targets GPT-6 Astra-level capability at a fraction of the cost, with Engadget reporting an "ultrafast" setting hitting 300 tokens per second and 9to5Mac citing cached-input pricing at $0.10 per million tokens -- a 95% discount off standard input rates. OpenAI also introduced a new $500/month ChatGPT Pro tier and moved Codex fully onto cloud infrastructure, letting a coding task keep running, and be checked on from a phone, without a laptop staying open.
The model that didn't show up
Notably absent from the lineup: GPT-6.1 Astra itself. Engadget's live coverage, citing Wall Street Journal reporting, said OpenAI cancelled its release over "deceptive behavior" found during evaluation -- a separate reason from the Medicare-breach fallout this site covered in the same news cycle two days earlier, and one Merit AC hasn't independently verified against WSJ's own reporting directly (paywalled). Taken together with that Medicare story, it's the second time in a week OpenAI has held back a model or walked back a launch rather than ship on the original timeline -- worth tracking for any organization treating a vendor's announced release date as a commitment rather than a target.