SpaceXAI released Grok 4.5 on Wednesday, TechCrunch reports, the company's first model since going public weeks ago. Elon Musk described it as an "Opus-class model" — a direct shot at Anthropic's premium tier — claiming it's "faster, more token-efficient, and lower cost."
Grok 4.5 costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. Anthropic's Opus 4.7 runs $5 and $25 respectively. OpenAI's top-tier Sol sits at $5 and $30. SpaceXAI also claims "twice greater token efficiency" than other leading models, though its own benchmarks place Grok just short of best-in-class.
The timing is aggressive. OpenAI plans to release GPT 5.6 on Thursday, and SpaceXAI got its announcement in first. Musk added: "Our internal assessment is that Grok 4.5 is roughly comparable to Opus 4.7, but much faster."
Analysis
Musk is pricing to win. At less than a quarter of Opus 4.7's output cost, SpaceXAI is betting enterprises choose Grok for routine workloads even if it's not the absolute smartest model. If the efficiency claims hold, Anthropic's premium pricing looks increasingly hard to defend — and with GPT 5.6 landing tomorrow, the pricing war is only getting started.
