OpenAI and Ironclad announced a strategic research collaboration on October 6, 2026, to refine the training and evaluation of AI agents for contracting workflows. The companies jointly developed 11 specific legal tasks, including agreement configuration, approval management, and contract renewals.
The new GPT-6 Astra model, introduced in late September 2026, achieved an average accuracy score of 55.0% across these tasks. This represents an improvement over the GPT-5.6 Sol model, which averaged 41.6%.
Efficiency also increased during the testing period. The average time required to complete a task decreased from 37.0 minutes to 19.2 minutes, marking a 48% improvement in speed. Ironclad employees provided domain expertise to define success criteria for these benchmarks.
The partnership builds on a long-standing relationship between the firms that began in 2023 with the launch of Ironclad’s AI Assist. In 2026, OpenAI hired Ironclad co-founder Jason Boehmig to lead a new legal vertical, signaling the company's intent to expand its focus on legal business solutions.
