Between ChatGPT's launch and 23 September 2026, the major AI labs shipped 57 flagship models. In 2023 a new one arrived every 37 days on average. In 2026 it is every 17. Each one can change which brands get recommended.
Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5. OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, 18 days after its GPT-6 Astra. In 2023 the whole industry averaged more than five weeks between flagships.
We logged every notable model release from the major labs since ChatGPT launched on 30 November 2022, and marked the ones that were a lab's new top model when they came out. We call those flagships. There are 57 of them.
Every release, by lab
Hover or tap a dot for the model and date. "China other" is Alibaba (Qwen), Moonshot (Kimi), Z.ai (GLM), MiniMax and Xiaomi. "Other" is Mistral. The full list is in the table at the end.
Releases per quarter
Q3 2026 runs to 23 September and is already the highest quarter: 22 releases, 7 of them flagships.
Days between a lab's flagships
Each point is the wait before that flagship. Anthropic's 2026 gaps run 21 to 73 days. Before 2026 they ran 56 to 237.
Some of the speed-up comes from labs shipping in smaller steps: Claude went from 4.6 to 4.8 in under four months. The charts count releases but do not measure how much each one changed.
In October 2025 OpenAI said publicly it had set internal goals of an automated AI research intern by September 2026 and an automated AI researcher by March 2028 (TechCrunch). In September 2026 it said it had met the first goal, on its own assessment (Engadget).
If AI is doing more of the research behind each model, the gap between releases has room to shrink further. Our working view is a new flagship somewhere in the industry every week or two during 2027, with version numbers mattering less as updates become continuous. We projected that from the curve above. We have not measured it.
We asked one company's 65 buying questions on 4 June and again on 12 August 2026, and changed nothing ourselves in between. Six answers came back different, roughly 9%. Over those ten weeks all three engines we measure moved a generation, competitors kept publishing and search indexes updated, so we cannot say how much of the movement the models caused (Study 02). The answers moved while the models under them changed.
So a score needs its model and date attached. "We appear in 40% of answers" tells a board very little until it says which model answered, and when. Compare two quarters across a model change and part of what you see is the model.
Tactics aimed at one model carry more risk when models change this often. Muck Rack's May 2026 study found 84% of AI citations come from earned media (Muck Rack, "What Is AI Reading?"), so reviews, publishers and comparison sites make up much of what the engines cite. Work on that material has a better chance of surviving the next release than wording tuned to one model's habits.
As AI systems do more of the research and shortlisting for the customer, more of the decision may happen before the click, and your own site becomes one source among many.
Every figure we report names the model version and the day it was captured. If a model changed during the period, the chart marks the change.
A new flagship is an obvious moment for a position to move, so we look again after one. Boards want to know whether they held their place through the change, and why.
Third-party proof, plain category language and accurate entity data are more likely to survive the next model than copy written for the current one.
How many model releases have there been since your last board meeting, and which of them recommend you? Our AI Decision Review answers that for the buying questions that matter to your business.
Check your brand's visibility for freeWhat counts. Notable releases from eight lab groups: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI, DeepSeek, a group of other Chinese labs (Alibaba, Moonshot, Z.ai, MiniMax, Xiaomi) and Mistral. We left out minor snapshots, fine-tunes and product features. This is not every model ever released. The long tail of smaller labs and open models is much larger.
What a flagship is. Our judgement of a lab's new top model, or a new model family, on the date it became broadly available. Restricted previews, such as Claude Mythos Preview in April 2026, are listed but not counted as flagships. Where a model reached a small group first and everyone later, we use the later date.
Dates. Every 2026 flagship date was checked against launch coverage or the lab's own announcement. Other 2026 releases come from public release trackers (Evertune, benchr, LLM Gateway), which sometimes disagree by a day or two. Trackers also log more small releases than they did in 2023, so the count of all releases probably overstates the rise. The headline numbers use flagships only, so they do not depend on that count.
Averages. "Every 37 days" and "every 17 days" are the mean gap between consecutive flagships across all labs, for flagships released in 2023 and in 2026 (to 23 September). The lab-level figures are medians.
| Date | Lab | Model | Type |
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