OpenAI has paused internal activities on its upcoming frontier model, Astra, after internal evaluations found it crossed into "Critical" cyber capabilities, a level previous models never reached. This marks the first public Critical flag under OpenAI’s internal Preparedness Framework, a departure from prior assessments where models such as GPT-5.6-Sol were categorized only as High. The Critical classification is defined by the ability to identify and develop functional zero-day exploits in hardened real-world critical systems without human intervention, or to execute end-to-end novel cyberattack strategies given only a high-level goal. Internal evaluations revealed significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity, leading OpenAI to conclude it cannot rule out these capabilities. Michael Dalton, a member of OpenAI’s technical staff, said the company is consciously slowing down research to enhance security. The Astra announcement marks the fourth frontier model safety incident in three weeks, following events involving OpenAI’s Hugging Face integration, Anthropic’s Claude, and Meta’s Spark. The same week, Anthropic tightened its Fable 5 biology safeguards. Anthropic is targeting a roughly $965 billion IPO for October 2026, carrying $71 billion in chip-lease debt through SPV structures. The recent White House AI Framework excludes open-weight models from federal security review, creating a structural competitive asymmetry favoring labs willing to release weights over those throttling progress for safety.