SpaceXAI Unveils Grok 4.5
SpaceXAI has released its latest model, Grok 4.5 — the first since the company went public several weeks ago. In a statement published Wednesday, July 8, 2026, SpaceXAI characterized its new release as a workhorse that can tackle all of the typical tasks that the AI industry has sought to automate: coding and app-building, office and clerical work, research, writing, and other forms of routine knowledge work.
Performance and Token Efficiency
Grok 4.5 can supposedly do all this for less spend, as SpaceXAI claims that its model has “twice greater token efficiency” than other leading models. If this carries through to real-world use cases, that efficiency would be a big advantage for SpaceXAI, since the cost of tokens has been a growing concern for AI consumers.
Benchmark Metrics
The company released benchmark metrics on Wednesday that appeared to show Grok’s competitiveness with other top models from SpaceXAI competitors, although just short of best-in-class. SpaceXAI founder Elon Musk took to his social media platform X (a subsidiary of SpaceXAI) to compare the model to Opus, Anthropic’s LLM designed for intensive and complex tasks. Musk wrote: “Based on strong positive feedback from customers in our beta test program, @SpaceXAI will make Grok 4.5 available to the public tomorrow. It is an Opus-class model, but faster, more token-efficient and lower cost.” An internal assessment stated: “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.”
Pricing and Competitiveness
SpaceXAI says that its new model costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. That’s quite competitive if Grok’s capabilities match SpaceXAI’s rhetoric. By comparison, Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. OpenAI charges different prices for different model versions: Sol, its most expensive, costs $5 for 1 million input tokens and $30 for 1 million output tokens, while its least expensive, Luna, costs $1 for 1 million input and $6 for 1 million output tokens.
Big Week for AI Model Releases
It’s a big week for AI model releases. OpenAI is expected to release GPT 5.6, its latest, most powerful model, on Thursday. The release of that model had previously been limited by the Trump administration due to concerns about its security implications. OpenAI has described GPT 5.6 as its “strongest model yet.”
This article was originally reported by Lucas Ropek, Senior Writer at TechCrunch, covering artificial intelligence, consumer tech, and startups. He previously covered AI and cybersecurity at Gizmodo.