Multiple major AI services experience simultaneous outage
ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and related coding tools experienced near-simultaneous service disruptions on September 3, 2026, with peak reports of 37,000 outages for ChatGPT. All services were restored by early afternoon US Eastern Time, with some speculation about Microsoft Azure infrastructure involvement.
What happened
On September 3, 2026, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Cursor (a coding tool acquired by SpaceX) experienced near-simultaneous service disruptions beginning around 10:20 AM US Eastern Time. ChatGPT received 37,000 outage reports by 11:00 AM.
Users reported delayed computations and errors when entering commands. All affected services returned to stable operation after 12:00 PM US Eastern Time. Some users also reported that Google's Gemini service went offline at a similar time, though Google did not issue an official outage notice.
Reported impact
The simultaneous outage caused widespread inconvenience to global users of multiple AI services. OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX AI noted that Codex users with remote control functionality may have needed to reconnect their devices.
Index analysis
The near-simultaneous failure of multiple independent AI services from different providers was described as exceptional. Some observers speculated the outages may have resulted from problems with Microsoft's Azure cloud service, though the companies operating the AI services did not confirm a cause.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.