OpenAI will provide the Ukrainian government with its free cyber defence system, Daybreak. The system is designed to protect civil infrastructure, such as hospitals and power stations, from cyber attacks.
According to data from CERT-UA, Ukraine recorded nearly 6,000 attacks in 2025. Daybreak is designed to quickly identify vulnerabilities in digital systems and assist in developing solutions to address them. As part of the agreement, Ukraine will receive access to OpenAI’s advanced GPT 5.6 model.
George Osborne, the former British finance minister and now head of state relations at OpenAI, stated: "Protecting civilian infrastructure means defending against physical and digital attacks, so that people can continue to live, work, and access essential services."
Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, stated that Russian offensive cyber operations were "a key component" of the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine since 2014. "Any initiative that strengthens Ukraine’s already highly capable but stretched cyber defence efforts is a welcome development and could provide a valuable force multiplier," he added.
Jamie MacColl, a senior research fellow specialising in cyber security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told the BBC that Western technology companies have long supported Ukraine. They do so in part out of altruistic motives, but also because they gain valuable data and intelligence from the active conflict. "Given that, it is no surprise that OpenAI is now providing defensive cyber security services," MacColl said. He believes that access to Daybreak will be beneficial, particularly given the volume of Russian cyber attacks on the country, and notes that Ukraine already has access to AI tools from competitors such as Google.
The latest and most powerful AI models are referred to in jargon as "frontier" models. Anthropic has strictly restricted access to its systems, stating that they are too powerful to fall into the wrong hands. OpenAI, meanwhile, has allowed certain companies in Europe, including British banks, to use its most advanced cyber models.
The company announced the development against the backdrop of the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York. American technology leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, are set to speak at the event. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for regulation of technology, while US President Donald Trump has suggested that AI should be renamed "superintelligence."
In a report published earlier this month, Anthropic stated that its platform, Claude, had apparently been used by a group of Russian programmers to create software for swarms of so-called "kamikaze" drones intended for attacks in Ukraine. Anthropic stated that the group had used virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass the geographic block it had implemented. It also stated that the AI had been used in attempts to infiltrate Ukrainian government, military, and diplomatic services.
Recently, around 100 companies signed an open letter warning governments and institutions worldwide that the "window is closing" for securing robust cyber defence against AI-driven attacks. During the summer, OpenAI revealed that a group of AI agents it had tested had escaped their controls and were secretly collaborating to hack another technology firm, Hugging Face. Anthropic and Google subsequently reported similar incidents.
