OpenAI has finished pretraining its newest model. It’s been referred to internally as “Spud,” and if the pattern from their recent releases holds, it will be in users’ hands within weeks.
Most entrepreneurs will respond to this the way they respond to every major AI release: they’ll try it for a few days, say “wow, this is impressive,” and then keep using AI for exactly the same things they were using it for before.
That’s a waste of a significant moment.
The right way to prepare for a capability jump like this isn’t to wait and react. It’s to do a specific kind of thinking right now, before the model arrives, so you’re ready to use it differently instead of just using it more.
What We Know About What’s Coming
Based on the trajectory of ChatGPT’s development in 2026, the most meaningful improvements in the next model are likely to be in three areas.
Long-term memory. The ability to maintain meaningful context across sessions has been improving steadily, and the next model is expected to extend this further. This matters for entrepreneurs because it means less time re-establishing context every time you open a conversation.
Autonomous task execution. Multi-step tasks that currently require you to stay in the loop at every stage are moving toward more reliable autonomous completion. You give the AI a goal, it figures out the steps, executes them, and reports back.
Reasoning quality on complex problems. This is the one that shows up most in business use. The ability to hold multiple competing variables, reason across longer chains of logic, and arrive at conclusions that reflect genuine analytical depth rather than pattern matching.
These improvements cascade. Better memory, better autonomy, and better reasoning together change what AI can actually do for a business owner who uses it intentionally.
The Preparation Exercise That Actually Matters
Here’s the exercise I run with entrepreneurs before a major AI capability upgrade, and I’d encourage you to do it now.
Sit down with a blank document and answer these four questions:
What am I currently using AI for that’s working well? These are your core workflows. They’re not changing. You’re just going to use a better engine.
What am I using AI for that’s mediocre? These are the tasks where the output is okay but you have to do significant work to fix it. A better model may cross the threshold where this becomes genuinely useful.
What have I tried AI for and given up on? These are the most important. Things you attempted and the quality wasn’t there. A capability jump is exactly the time to try these again. Make a list. Be specific.
What would I do with AI if I knew it could handle it reliably? This is the blue-sky question. What would change about how you work if you had an AI that could reliably do things that feel outside reach right now?
That fourth question is where the advantage lives. Most entrepreneurs never ask it because they’re focused on what AI can do today, not what they’d do differently if it could do more.
The Bigger Pattern to See Here
April 2026 is not a random week in AI development.
You have Anthropic finishing training on Claude Mythos, described as their most capable model ever. You have OpenAI weeks away from launching a new model. You have Google rolling out Personal Intelligence to free users. You have automation platforms releasing AI-native upgrades across the board.
This is a cluster. Multiple major capability improvements arriving in a short window.
The entrepreneurs who treat each of these as isolated product announcements will get marginal value from each. The entrepreneurs who see the cluster for what it is, a meaningful step up in what AI can do, will restructure how they use AI in their business.
Not because they’re more technically sophisticated. Because they’re paying attention to the right signal.
Three Things to Do Before Spud Launches
You have a few weeks. Here’s how to use them.
Document your current AI stack. What tools are you using? What for? How often? Where are the gaps? You can’t evaluate an improvement if you haven’t baselined what you’re working with now.
Write down your “given up on” list. The tasks you attempted with AI and stopped. This list becomes your first test queue when the new model arrives.
Decide what you’ll do differently if the reasoning quality jumps. Pick one specific decision type or workflow you’d move into AI’s hands if the quality were there. Have it ready. When it is there, you’ll know immediately what to do with it.
The entrepreneurs who come out of this window ahead are the ones who treated it as a strategic moment, not a product launch.
That’s the mindset. The model is almost here. What will you do with it?
Jonathan Mast is the founder of White Beard Strategies, helping entrepreneurs across 190+ countries build AI into their businesses for real results. Explore our programs at whitebeardstrategies.com.
