Auto-drafted postmortem
OpenAI outage on September 16 — 2h 11m disruption
Sep 16, 06:44 PM → Sep 16, 08:56 PM · 2h 11m · medium
On September 16, 2026, OpenAI experienced a service disruption. This incident was detected from elevated user-report volume. The issue was resolved on September 16, 2026, at 20:56 UTC.
Peak reports
2
in 15 min
Total reports
9
during the incident
Duration
2h 11m
tracked by PulseWatch
Impact
User-reported issues primarily involved OpenAI's AI API. During the 2-hour 11-minute disruption, a total of 9 user reports were received, with a peak of 2 reports within a 15-minute period. No specific regional impact was recorded.
Top reported issues
- AI API issues9
Incident timeline
- Sep 16, 06:44 PM
PulseWatch detected elevated report volume (medium severity)
- Sep 16, 06:44 PM
Status updated: possible issue
- Sep 16, 06:45 PM
Peak of 2 reports in 15 minutes (baseline 1.3)
- Sep 16, 08:56 PM
Report volume returned to baseline — incident resolved
Official updates
- Sep 16, 06:44 PM
OpenAI status page acknowledged the incident.
View official source