SpaceXAI launches Grok 4.5, its first model since going public

SpaceXAI has released Grok 4.5, the company’s first model since it went public several weeks ago. In a blog post published Wednesday, SpaceXAI described the model as a workhorse capable of handling the typical tasks the AI industry has sought to automate: coding and app-building, office and clerical work, research, writing, and other routine knowledge work.

SpaceXAI says Grok 4.5 supposedly has twice greater token efficiency than other leading models — a measure of how many tokens, the units of text a model processes as input or generates as output, it needs to complete a task. The company priced the model at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, undercutting Anthropic’s Opus 4.7, which costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Musk said SpaceXAI will make Grok 4.5 available to the public tomorrow, citing strong feedback from customers in its beta test program, and described it on X as an Opus-class model that is faster, more token-efficient and lower cost. He added: “Our internal assessment is that Grok 4.5 is roughly comparable to Opus 4.7, but much faster. The combination of capability, faster speed and lower cost is what makes it competitive.”

OpenAI, SpaceXAI’s other major rival, prices its models on a tiered scale:

• Sol, OpenAI’s most expensive model, costs $5 for 1 million input tokens and $30 for 1 million output tokens.
• Luna, OpenAI’s least expensive model, costs $1 for 1 million input and $6 for 1 million output tokens.

OpenAI is planning to release GPT 5.6, its upcoming model, on Thursday. That planned release had previously been limited by the Trump administration, due to concerns about its security implications.

Why it matters

If SpaceXAI’s claims of superior token efficiency hold up in real-world use, it could significantly lower operational costs for enterprises, addressing a major pain point for AI consumers.