OpenAI is reportedly advancing a large-scale pre-training model codenamed "Doug," marking its most ambitious base model overhaul since GPT-4o, according to multiple sources revealed on August 9. The project signals that OpenAI has broken through pre-training bottlenecks that have persisted for nearly two years, potentially returning the industry's foundational Scaling Law trajectory to center stage. X platform user ChrisGPT, who first leaked the information, stated that Doug is OpenAI's largest pre-training project to date and is not the same model as the upcoming GPT-6, which he suggested is likely "Astra"—a model whose release was abruptly postponed the previous day due to safety concerns. ChrisGPT estimated Doug could launch by November 2026 at the latest. SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor and AI industry research firm, had earlier published a research memo dated July 9, explicitly stating that "OpenAI has overcome its pre-training issues, and a much larger model codenamed Doug is being actively pursued." The watershed moment began with the release of GPT-4o on May 13, 2024, after which OpenAI failed to complete a full-scale pre-training run for a next-generation flagship model, instead relying on an alternative technical path. In September 2024, o1-preview debuted, demonstrating a scaling paradigm using large-scale reinforcement learning and inference-time compute. According to SemiAnalysis, capability leaps in o3 (released in April 2025) and the GPT-5 series (unve