09/04/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/04/2026 11:36
The next era of enterprise AI will not be defined by chat experiences. It will be defined by how well a model can work for and with you. GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI's newest frontier model, begins rolling out today through the Microsoft Foundry Limited Access Program, with availability expanding to participating customers over the coming days. It is designed to help organizations make decisions for complex work and execute across the applications and systems where your business operates.
We are investing to make it easier for customers to use advanced technology like Astra. AI initiatives often slow down on identity, networking, governance, data handling, evaluation, and compliance. Microsoft Foundry brings these fundamentals together in Azure, helping teams move from experimentation to production with speed and trust.
Turn open-ended goals into action
Astra is built to take an open-ended challenge, reason through it in multiple steps, create a plan, and produce a polished result. It can weigh trade-offs, incorporate new direction as work progresses, and use tools across applications and systems.
For enterprises, this shifts AI from conversational assistance toward delivering more substantial units of work:
At Replit, our mission is making useful intelligence accessible to everyone. GPT-6 Astra available through Microsoft Foundry unlocks a new level of agentic capability that goes beyond code generation to active software creation and more. We're excited about the opportunities created for developers and entrepreneurs to build more ambitious applications with an intelligent software-building partner.
-Luis Hector Chavez, CTO, ReplitComputer use across applications
Astra's computer-use capabilities are designed to work across familiar applications, including workflows without dedicated APIs. It can interpret on-screen information and interact with approved interfaces to support tasks such as updating records, navigating development tools, testing software, and assembling results into reports. OpenAI reports state-of-the-art results on selected computer-use evaluations; performance varies by task, tools, configuration, and safeguards.
Capability this direct demands containment. Content displayed in an application may be incomplete, misleading, or designed to influence an agent's behavior. Foundry helps customers define access, approvals, and monitoring, and design workflows with scoped credentials, approved resources, human checkpoints for consequential actions, and activity records aligned to their risk requirements.
Enterprise scenarios we're seeing
Enterprise controls for agentic work
OpenAI describes Astra as its most aligned model to date and plans to publish supporting alignment, safety, and computer-use evaluations in its supporting launch materials. Foundry complements that model-level work with enterprise security, safety, and compliance capabilities, including Microsoft Entra identity and access management, encryption in transit and at rest, private networking options, role-based access controls, content filtering, safety evaluations, monitoring, and governance tools.
Prompts and outputs are not used to train the models. These capabilities help customers configure safeguards and maintain oversight, but do not eliminate risk or replace each organization's responsibility to select and configure controls appropriate to its scenarios and regulatory obligations.
At Albertsons Companies, we believe the real advantage in frontier AI is the ability to evolve as quickly as the technology does, without compromising enterprise discipline. That means creating an environment where we can evaluate new capabilities, put the right ones to work quickly and maintain consistent security, governance and operational controls as we scale. Azure OpenAI on Microsoft Foundry helps us create that balance of speed and control, so our teams can stay focused on delivering meaningful outcomes for our customers, associates and the business.
-Anirban Nandi, VP, Data and AI, Albertsons CompaniesGlobal scale with service level to match
GPT-6 Astra will be available through Standard deployments including Global and U.S. Data Zone. Customers can choose the right deployment based on workload requirements.
This consumption-based model lets teams begin building without committing to reserved capacity. Astra is also designed for token efficiency on complex work, helping customers manage consumption as they scale. Actual usage and costs will vary by workload and configuration.
GPT-6 Astra pricing
Get started today
Explore the model: Try GPT-6 Astra in Foundry Models to see its advanced capabilities firsthand.
Build agentic workflows: Start with the Foundry Agent Service to bring cross-application task execution to your workflows.