# OpenAI says monitoring safeguards add 20% inference-compute overhead

_Tuesday, August 18, 2026 at 11:30 PM EDT · AI, Products · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

OpenAI said its new monitoring and security safeguards will add 20% compute overhead to monitored inference workloads, according to a report summarized by Techmeme. The company said it would not pass those costs on to customers. The summary describes the change as expanded multistage chain-of-thought monitoring for frontier-model work. It does not specify which workloads will be monitored, when the safeguards take effect, or how OpenAI will absorb the added expense.

## Sources

- [Techmeme](https://www.techmeme.com/260818/p46#a260818p46)

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Retrieved: 2026-08-19T09:12:57.970Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)