Nobody Is Saying Why OpenAI and Anthropic Had Outages Save this storySave this storyFrontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI all experienced rare outages on Thursday morning, creating downtime
By Coderz Club · 2026-09-04 · Tags: ai
Nobody Is Saying Why OpenAI and Anthropic Had Outages
Save this storySave this storyFrontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI all experienced rare outages on Thursday morning, creating downtime for their corresponding AI chatbots. SpaceX, xAI’s parent company, said on Thursday afternoon that the issues with Grok resulted from “an outage at our Memphis compute center this morning.”The issues initially appeared to be linked because they coincided—perhaps the result of a shared third-party service provider—but neither OpenAI nor Anthropic cited an external source in comments to WIRED on Thursday. SpaceX, xAI’s parent company, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. But the company said as part of its public comments on Thursday: “We’d also like to apologize to our impacted compute partners.” Anthropic and xAI announced a “compute partnership” with SpaceX in May.OpenAI spokesperson Kathleen Chaykowski tells WIRED: “A routing error starting around 7:43 am PT on Thursday, September 3, made ChatGPT and Codex unavailable for some users across platforms. As of about 8:17 am PT on Thursday, a solution was successfully implemented and is continuing to be monitored.”Anthropic declined to comment on the episode. The company began alerting about a “partial outage” at 6:23 am PT on Thursday that involved “elevated errors on requests to Claude Mythos 5.1, Claude Fable 5.1, and Claude Opus 5.” Shortly after, the company said it had “identified the cause” and that “a fix has been deployed.” The company marked the issue as resolved by 9:16 am PT. Claude Sonnet 5 seemed to briefly have similar issues shortly after 9 am PT.xAI reported Grok outages across all of its platforms and services beginning at 6:30 am PT when the company posted “investigating outage” on its service status page. “Grok is experiencing issues. We are working on restoring service as quickly as possible,” the page said. At 10:05 am PT the episode was marked complete. “We have resolved the situation, and traffic is healthy again,” the company wrote.There were scattered reports of a possible Google Gemini outage on Thursday morning as well, but the company did not confirm this or record any incidents on its service status dashboard. Google did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment ahead of publication.Typically, multiple outages in the same sector at the same time would point to a cloud provider, content delivery network, or other third-party vendor having issues affecting multiple customers. But OpenAI and Anthropic did not point to a potential shared cause, and major players in the internet infrastructure space—including Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure—did not report outages on Thursday.CommentsBack to topJoin the discussionCommentsBack to topYou Might Also LikeIn your inbox: WIRED's most ambitious, future-defining storiesAI slop backlash is actually having an impactBig Story: The cop who took on FlockThe rise of the 1am job interviewWatch: I stole a car by hacking this hidden deviceLily Hay Newman is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking. She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate, and was the staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Her work ... Read MoreSenior WriterTopicsOpenAIAnthropicxAISpaceXClaudeChatGPTartificial intelligenceInfrastructureInternetTesla’s Cybercab Officially Launches Today. It’s Already Under InvestigationThe US government is investigating whether the Cybercab, which lacks a steering wheel and pedals, meets vehicle safety standards.Aarian MarshallWho Cares if AI Is Conscious It’s Basically AliveWhile philosophers ponder AI consciousness, the models have ideas of their own.Steven LevyJapan Is Launching a Probe to Collect the First-Ever Samples From a Martian MoonThe mission to Phobos, Japan’s first Mars probe launch in 28 years, may reveal new information about our closest planetary neighbor.Ritsuko KawaiHow a Secret Orangutan Breeding Program Is Creating a Baby BoomThe success of a program linking zoos across the US has created social media stars and generated a wave of interest in how to protect the endangered great apes in the wild.Caroline ReillyICE Wants to Know Everyone Who Bought a Certain Green Beanie From REI in the Last 2 YearsHomeland Security Investigations agents hit the outdoor retailer with a controversial subpoena as part of a dragnet search for the identities of protesters who entered a Minnesota church in March.Maddy VarnerMeasles Outbreaks Are Forcing Parents of Immunocompromised Kids to Make Hard ChoicesWith the risk of infection rising, parents and their children are trying to navigate how safe it is to be out in public as school starts back up.Emily MullinAI Use in the Job Market Is Creating an Infinite Doom LoopJob seekers are trying to game the application process using AI. It’s not working, and not for the reasons you
Save this storySave this storyFrontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI all experienced rare outages on Thursday morning, creating downtime for their corresponding AI chatbots. SpaceX, xAI’s parent company, said on Thursday afternoon that the issues with Grok resulted from “an outage at our Memphis compute center this morning.”The issues initially appeared to be linked because they coincided—perhaps the result of a shared third-party service provider—but neither OpenAI nor Anthropic cited an external source in comments to WIRED on Thursday. SpaceX, xAI’s parent company, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. But the company said as part of its public comments on Thursday: “We’d also like to apologize to our impacted compute partners.” Anthropic and xAI announced a “compute partnership” with SpaceX in May.OpenAI spokesperson Kathleen Chaykowski tells WIRED: “A routing error starting around 7:43 am PT on Thursday, September 3, made ChatGPT and Codex unavailable for some users across platforms. As of about 8:17 am PT on Thursday, a solution was successfully implemented and is continuing to be monitored.”Anthropic declined to comment on the episode. The company began alerting about a “partial outage” at 6:23 am PT on Thursday that involved “elevated errors on requests to Claude Mythos 5.1, Claude Fable 5.1, and Claude Opus 5.” Shortly after, the company said it had “identified the cause” and that “a fix has been deployed.” The company marked the issue as resolved by 9:16 am PT. Claude Sonnet 5 seemed to briefly have similar issues shortly after 9 am PT.xAI reported Grok outages across all of its platforms and services beginning at 6:30 am PT when the company posted “investigating outage” on its service status page. “Grok is experiencing issues. We are working on restoring service as quickly as possible,” the page said. At 10:05 am PT the episode was marked complete. “We have resolved the situation, and traffic is healthy again,” the company wrote.There were scattered reports of a possible Google Gemini outage on Thursday morning as well, but the company did not confirm this or record any incidents on its service status dashboard. Google did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment ahead of publication.Typically, multiple outages in the same sector at the same time would point to a cloud provider, content delivery network, or other third-party vendor having issues affecting multiple customers. But OpenAI and Anthropic did not point to a potential shared cause, and major players in the internet infrastructure space—including Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure—did not report outages on Thursday.CommentsBack to topJoin the discussionCommentsBack to topYou Might Also LikeIn your inbox: WIRED's most ambitious, future-defining storiesAI slop backlash is actually having an impactBig Story: The cop who took on FlockThe rise of the 1am job interviewWatch: I stole a car by hacking this hidden deviceLily Hay Newman is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking. She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate, and was the staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Her work ... Read MoreSenior WriterTopicsOpenAIAnthropicxAISpaceXClaudeChatGPTartificial intelligenceInfrastructureInternetTesla’s Cybercab Officially Launches Today. It’s Already Under InvestigationThe US government is investigating whether the Cybercab, which lacks a steering wheel and pedals, meets vehicle safety standards.Aarian MarshallWho Cares if AI Is Conscious It’s Basically AliveWhile philosophers ponder AI consciousness, the models have ideas of their own.Steven LevyJapan Is Launching a Probe to Collect the First-Ever Samples From a Martian MoonThe mission to Phobos, Japan’s first Mars probe launch in 28 years, may reveal new information about our closest planetary neighbor.Ritsuko KawaiHow a Secret Orangutan Breeding Program Is Creating a Baby BoomThe success of a program linking zoos across the US has created social media stars and generated a wave of interest in how to protect the endangered great apes in the wild.Caroline ReillyICE Wants to Know Everyone Who Bought a Certain Green Beanie From REI in the Last 2 YearsHomeland Security Investigations agents hit the outdoor retailer with a controversial subpoena as part of a dragnet search for the identities of protesters who entered a Minnesota church in March.Maddy VarnerMeasles Outbreaks Are Forcing Parents of Immunocompromised Kids to Make Hard ChoicesWith the risk of infection rising, parents and their children are trying to navigate how safe it is to be out in public as school starts back up.Emily MullinAI Use in the Job Market Is Creating an Infinite Doom LoopJob seekers are trying to game the application process using AI. It’s not working, and not for the reasons you