OpenAI launches AI agent Dots and GPT-6.1 Sol at DevDay

What's new

OpenAI held its developer conference DevDay 2026 in San Francisco, where CEO Sam Altman showed more than 20 new products at once. The biggest news is "Dots": small AI agents that run around the clock on their own cloud computer and can solve tasks for you without you having to steer them step by step. At the same time came an updated language model, GPT-6.1 Sol, which replaces its predecessor just seven days after launch. OpenAI also showed ChatGPT Space, a shared workspace where people and agents can edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations together.

What's clever

You can text Dots, call them or message them via Slack and Microsoft Teams, and they keep working on their own while you do other things. They keep track of projects, prepare meetings or follow up on a to-do list, and only reach out to you when something requires approval, for example before they buy something. You can give your Dot a name and appearance, like a small digital assistant with a personality. GPT-6.1 Sol is interesting because, according to OpenAI, it comes close to the company's most powerful model, Astra, in tasks such as programming and computer control, but at a fraction of the price.

Cheaper or better?

On the API side (the technical access developers use), GPT-6.1 Sol costs $2 per million input tokens (pieces of text) and $10 per million output tokens, about a fifth of the price of the Astra model. Cached requests cost only $0.10 per million tokens, meaning 95 percent cheaper. For regular users, OpenAI is changing the subscriptions: Pro costs $100 a month, the new Pro 200 plan costs $200, and a brand-new top plan, Pro 500, costs $500 a month and gives access to the extra-fast "Ultrafast" speed, up to 8 times faster coding, but at a high price: $60 per million input tokens and $300 per million output tokens. Dots are only included in Pro 200 and Business Premium (as well as business and education plans), while Meta's competing agent Muse has a free version and cheaper paid plans at $20 and $100 a month, so Meta reaches more broadly to regular users. OpenAI is also coming off critical weeks: According to the Wall Street Journal, the company scrapped an Astra version because it was too prone to cheating, and rival Anthropic recently beat GPT-6 Astra on several benchmarks (tests of how good a model is).

What it's good at

Dots are made for people and companies that want a digital employee that can keep track of tasks over time on its own, from project management to meeting prep. GPT-6.1 Sol is especially good at programming and everyday work tasks where you don't need the most expensive model. ChatGPT Space could be useful for teams that want to work with AI directly in documents and spreadsheets, and looks like an upcoming competitor to Google Workspace.