AsyncOpenAI(api_key="") raises OpenAIError in v2.34.0, breaking OpenAI-compatible local servers

[tbille]

Confirm this is an issue with the Python library and not an underlying OpenAI API

• This is an issue with the Python library

Describe the bug

In v2.34.0, AsyncOpenAI(api_key="") now raises OpenAIError: Missing credentials. In v2.33.0 and earlier, passing an empty string was silently accepted.

This is a breaking change for anyone using the OpenAI Python SDK to talk to OpenAI-compatible local servers (llama.cpp, llamafile, LM Studio, vLLM, etc.) that do not require authentication. These wrappers intentionally pass api_key="" because no credentials are needed for a local HTTP server.

The root cause appears to be the new credential validation logic in _client.py around line 700, which now checks not self.api_key (falsy for ""), along with the new workload_identity and admin_api_key checks added in 2.34.0.

Previous behavior (v2.33.0): AsyncOpenAI(api_key="", base_url="http://localhost:8080/v1") succeeded and produced a usable client.

New behavior (v2.34.0): The same call raises:

openai.OpenAIError: Missing credentials. Please pass an `api_key`, `workload_identity`,
`admin_api_key`, or set the `OPENAI_API_KEY` or `OPENAI_ADMIN_KEY` environment variable.

The workaround is to pass a non-empty placeholder string (e.g., api_key="not-needed"), but this is surprising since api_key="" worked in all prior versions.

To Reproduce

1. Install openai==2.34.0
2. Run the code below
3. Observe OpenAIError raised

Code snippets

from openai import AsyncOpenAI

# Works in 2.33.0, fails in 2.34.0
client = AsyncOpenAI(
    api_key="",
    base_url="http://localhost:8080/v1",
)

OS

Linux and macOS (all platforms)

Python version

Python 3.11, 3.12, 3.13

Library version

openai v2.34.0

[bheemaguli]

+1 for this. Tests and other CI are failing because of hard requirement.