OpenAI to Pause New Pro Subscriptions, Cites Astra Demand

OpenAI said Thursday it will pause new subscriptions to its $200-a-month plan for Astra, its new flagship model, another sign of the compute crunch facing AI companies.

Thibault Sottiaux, who leads OpenAI’s Codex coding agent, cited strains on the company’s systems and a desire to preserve service for existing users.

Astra, released this month, has met “unprecedented demand,” Sottiaux said Wednesday on X. “We’re pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand,” he wrote, adding that he had never seen growth like it.

OpenAI billed the model in early September as a major leap in commercial work, touting its ability to handle financial modeling, engineering design, coding and other tasks.

Other AI companies have curbed customer use or raised prices in the light of the compute squeeze. In April, Anthropic told developers they could no longer use $20-to-$200-a-month Claude subscriptions to power outside agent tools such as OpenClaw. In June, Amazon said it was raising the price for its AI workload rental service by 20%. And Elon Musk has predicted power shortages and other constraints will lead to a compute shortfall next year.