Rumor math: OpenAI's Astra may be just 2-3x Kimi K3, gains from RL not scale
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-09-07
Twitter user teortaxesTex offers an unverified back-of-envelope analysis of OpenAI's rumored Astra model:
- Astra trails Fable badly on knowledge-heavy evals and is only marginally better than Opus or Sol; it's a mediocre creative writer, and total scale correlates strongly with writing ability
- Serial depth suggests ≤2x GPT-4 (≤240 layers); looping rumors would mean unique parameters are below per-forward-pass count
- Conclusion: Astra is plausibly a 2-3x larger Kimi K3 with modest algorithmic progress, with most of its edge from OpenAI's reasoning data plus heavy RL — including extreme RL scenarios that now cash out as ImageGen + Blender workflows
The author estimates >50% of compute went to RL and >150T training tokens. All figures are speculation, not confirmed.
Related event: GPT-6 Astra Rumors Swirl Over 1.2T Active Parameters(2 posts)→
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