OpenAI Extends Daybreak Cyber Program to Ukraine

OpenAI will give the Government of Ukraine access to its Daybreak program to support the cyber defense of civilian infrastructure, the company announced today.

The partnership, made with Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, will provide Ukrainian teams with AI tools to identify software vulnerabilities and to develop and test fixes more quickly. OpenAI announced the arrangement on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, with Dmytro Kushneruk, the Consul General of Ukraine in San Francisco, and Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI, presenting the news.

The stakes are considerable. Ukrainian defenders face persistent cyber attacks from Russia alongside physical attacks on the country's infrastructure. Ukraine's national cyber incident response team, CERT-UA, handled nearly 6,000 cyber incidents in 2025. Those incidents include attacks on hospital systems, the energy sector, and telecommunications — a sustained pressure campaign against the organizations providing essential services to Ukrainians.

Daybreak, OpenAI's program for authorized security work, gives cyber defenders access to advanced AI capabilities. Use cases range from reviewing older software and investigating suspicious activity to validating vulnerabilities and testing fixes.

"We are proud to support Ukraine's cyber defenders, who are protecting essential services against attacks every day," said Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI. "Through Daybreak, public and private entities have an opportunity to strengthen their cyber defenses before emerging threats take hold. Ukraine is already on the front line, and its defenders need support now. We want to put more capable tools in their hands to help them find and fix vulnerabilities and protect the critical networks people depend on."

The move signals that OpenAI views state-level cyber defense as a growing part of its government-facing business. George Osborne, Head of OpenAI for Countries, framed the decision in national security terms.

"Ukraine has shown under the most extreme pressure that cyber defense is a central part of national security," Osborne said. "Protecting civilian infrastructure means defending it against both physical and digital attacks, so people can continue to live, work and access essential services. We're now putting our technology and resources behind that effort, helping the Ukrainian government strengthen its cyber defenses with AI."

Ukraine is not the first government to receive this access. OpenAI has already provided its cyber models to defenders in Europe, including France, Germany, Poland, and others. The EU's cyber agency, ENISA, has used the models to identify vulnerabilities in software used across EU institutions — all of which have since been fixed, according to the company.

Poland offers the most concrete published example of the program's impact. The national cyber agency, CERT Polska, used OpenAI models to help discover six vulnerabilities in third-party router software. The vendor has released fixes, and CERT Polska confirms those fixes prevent the attacks it observed.

The Ukraine deployment extends a pattern: OpenAI is positioning its models as operational tools for national cyber defense agencies rather than research curiosities. With CERT-UA handling thousands of incidents annually and Russian attacks targeting hospitals, energy, and telecoms, the demand for faster vulnerability discovery and patch validation is immediate. Expect further government partnerships of this kind as OpenAI scales its OpenAI for Countries work.