OpenAI DevDay 2026: dots agents, GPT-6.1 Sol, Ultrafast, a $500 Pro plan and 20+ launches

What happened

OpenAI held DevDay 2026 on Tuesday, Sept 29, 2026 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Sam Altman gave the keynote at 10:00 PT. Beforehand he told CNBC there would be "more than 20 announcements", and on Sept 28 he had posted that OpenAI had "found a new thing". OpenAI's recap post groups the launches into five areas:

New ways of working

• dots: always-on agents powered by GPT-6 Astra, each with its own cloud computer. See 2026-09-29-openai-dots.
• GPT-6.1 Sol: an upgrade to GPT-6 Sol, released a week after it. OpenAI says it gives "near-Astra intelligence" at one-fifth of Astra's standard token prices ($2/$10 per 1M; cached input $0.10). See 2026-09-29-gpt-6-1-sol.
• Ultrafast: a premium speed tier. It is up to 8x faster (300 tokens/s) in Codex and up to 6x faster in the API, at 6x the standard API price. GPT-6 Astra Ultrafast is out now; GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast is "coming soon". See 2026-09-29-chatgpt-pro-500-ultrafast.
• OpenAI Private Intelligence: Zero Data Retention with Private Safety Processing lets automated safety reviews run without OpenAI staff seeing the content. A preview of Private Inference, which combines confidential computing with verifiable controls, is due "this fall". Altman said OpenAI designed it with Cisco, Databricks and Snowflake.

Codex and the API

• Codex in the cloud with reusable, shareable development environments (Plus, Pro, Business, Healthcare, Edu, Enterprise).
• Refreshed Codex CLI: voice control, an /agents view for tracking several tasks, better worktree and session handling (all plans).
• Code review in the ChatGPT desktop app, feeding GitHub PRs and GitLab MRs, with automatic cloud reviews (all plans).
• Codex Security Cloud: on-demand or scheduled scans of whole GitHub repositories and new commits. Codex deduplicates findings and prepares fixes. It includes Daybreak Blue models without a separate Daybreak application (Pro, Business, Enterprise, Edu).
• Decisions API: "real-time decision-making" that focuses a version of Luna on user-defined questions with a fixed set of answers. Input can be text or images. OpenAI's chart shows about 150 ms per decision versus 1.6 s for GPT-6 Luna through the regular API. It is in limited preview, with broad release "in the coming days". No price has been published. Press coverage (The New Stack, The Decoder) presented it as a response to TypeSafe's "Jev" decision model.
• Agents API with computer use: the Agents API, a managed Codex harness in public beta since Sept 10, now supports computer use in an OpenAI-hosted browser. It also gains Codex's multi-agent features, tool search and context compaction.
• Bedrock Managed Agents, powered by OpenAI: now built on the Agents API core, so OpenAI agents can run entirely in AWS.

Plugins

• Plugin extensions give a plugin a sidebar home, interactive panels and file viewers (all plans). Also new: Plugin Creator, a redesigned submission flow and better ranking, plugins inside Sites (Business, Enterprise, Healthcare, Edu), and support for the proposed MCP Events specification, which lets connected-app events trigger automations.

People and AI working together

• ChatGPT Space: a shared hub for teammates, ChatGPT and dots (Pro, Business, Enterprise; desktop and web).
• Pages: collaborative documents for humans and agents.
• Collaborative slides ("coming weeks"), exportable to PowerPoint and Google Slides.
• Teams and team tasks for scheduled or event-triggered recurring work.
• @ChatGPT in Slack and Microsoft Teams, usable without an individual license.
• Meetings plugin: notes and action items. It is a macOS beta for Pro and Business, and audio is deleted after notes are made.
• Shareable profiles for showcasing Sites and plugins.

Subscriptions

• Sign in with ChatGPT: Plus and Pro users can spend their plan allowance in 16 partner tools, including Devin, Notion, Vercel, T3, OpenClaw, Dactyl, Amp and Warp, with a weekly cap for each app. Identity sign-in is available globally.
• Pro 500: a $500/month plan with 25x the Plus allowance and Ultrafast. At the same time, Pro 200 reopened to new sign-ups with half its former allowance (10x Plus instead of 20x).
• OpenAI Marketplace: enterprises can spend part of their OpenAI commitment on software from 32 partners.

Around the keynote (CNBC interview with Altman)

• GPT-6.1 Astra's cancellation was "normal course": "Often we build a model, we test it, it doesn't meet our standards, we change it, we launch it later." OpenAI has "many great new models to come."
• Hardware: "something that's worth waiting for", but "I am not worried about being first with new hardware." No device was shown.
• IPO: "I don't have a particular timeline in mind", and "this is a time to put safety and mission first."
• He called Nvidia's new agent safety platform "a good thing" but "not a full solution", and said Meta's Muse "seems like a nice product."
• Protesters rallied outside the venue. Greg Brockman skipped DevDay to attend the White House AI lunch (2026-09-29-white-house-ai-summit).

Pre-event rumours vs. reality

• The rumoured always-on agent ("o", reportedly code-named "Aeon") launched as dots.
• The rumoured $500/month "ChatGPT Pro Max" launched as Pro 500.
• GPT-6 Cyber was not announced. Cyber work was served through Daybreak Blue access inside Codex Security Cloud.
• No hardware device was announced.

Why it matters

DevDay marks OpenAI's shift from chat and coding tools toward persistent, proactive agents (dots), and toward ChatGPT as a workspace platform (Space, Pages, plugin extensions, Marketplace). It is a direct answer to Meta's Muse. Pricing moved in two directions at once. Model prices kept falling: GPT-6.1 Sol offers near-flagship quality at $2/$10, with cached input at $0.10. Subscriptions were re-tiered toward pay-per-use: the $200 plan's allowance was halved, a $500 tier was added, and paid speed became a product (Ultrafast at 6x the price). All of this came one day after OpenAI withheld GPT-6.1 Astra on safety grounds. That put the safeguards for always-on agents running on GPT-6 Astra under close scrutiny.

Changelog

• 2026-09-29: created from OpenAI's recap, product posts, docs, X posts and live press coverage (keynote day).