The best AI model in the world just went on sale. Nobody flinched.
Two years ago, having the best model on the market was a fortune. On August 12 it became a discount.
xAI shipped Grok 4.6. It matches the most expensive model available on published scores, and charges $2 per million tokens in, $6 out. Grok 4.7, a far larger architecture, lands within weeks. The remarkable part is how ordinary this already feels.
The frontier has stopped being a place you reach and become a price you post. When three labs land on the same scores within weeks of each other, the score is no longer the product. The invoice is.
And a price lead is the weakest lead there is.
You can guard a secret. You cannot guard a number that any competitor is free to undercut tomorrow morning — and every one of them is now large enough to absorb the loss while doing it.
Anyone building on top of a model. Your costs are falling, and your advantage is not coming from the model.
Watch what Grok 4.7 costs. The same price means the floor dropped again. A higher one means 4.6 was a sale.
The cleverest part of your product is now free, replaceable, and getting cheaper while you read this. So whatever you actually sell has to live somewhere else. Most companies building on AI have not found that place yet — and the ones who find it late will be renting it from whoever got there first.
Sources: llm-stats.com AI news tracker; AIToolsRecap, August 2026.