TLDR
- SpaceX stock surged nearly 10% after CEO Elon Musk told employees the company “must win in AI”
- SpaceX launched Grok 4.6, positioning it as a cheaper rival to ChatGPT and Claude
- Grok 4.6 is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output, undercutting rivals
- AI measurement firm Artificial Analysis said Grok is now at the “intelligence frontier alongside OpenAI”
- Stock pulled back 0.3% to $145.65 in Thursday premarket, still above its $135 IPO price
SpaceX (SPCX) stock was down 0.3% to $145.65 in Thursday’s premarket, cooling off after a near 10% jump the previous session.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPCX
The rally came after CEO Elon Musk told employees in an all-hands meeting: “We must win in AI because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots.”
SpaceX followed those words with action, launching Grok 4.6 on Wednesday. The new model is billed as a “frontier intelligence” upgrade on Grok 4.5, delivered at the same price point.
Grok 4.7 will exceed all current models.
That said, Anthropic is a great company and will probably release improved models soon.
However, the SpaceX training corpus is so awesome & unique that I would be shocked if any model is better at real-world engineering than 4.7.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2026
Musk described it on X as “Smart, fast & amazing bang for buck.”
How Grok 4.6 Stacks Up on Price
The pricing is where SpaceX is making its clearest play. Grok 4.6 starts at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens.
Compare that to Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5, which runs $5 per million input and $25 per million output. OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol costs $5 per million input and $30 per million output.
SpaceX is pitching Grok 4.6 as “half the price of other frontier models,” and the numbers back that up.
AI benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis said the launch brings SpaceX AI “back to the intelligence frontier alongside OpenAI, behind only Anthropic.”
Grok’s Previous Weakness
Grok has faced criticism in the past for higher hallucination rates and false-confidence on factual questions compared to Claude and ChatGPT. Critics noted it was less likely to admit when it didn’t know something.
SpaceX appears to have taken that feedback on board with this release.
The new model is available through Grok Build, Cursor, Grok Bot, and the API. Users of Cursor and Grok Build get double usage during the first week.
Cursor is the AI coding editor built by Anysphere, which SpaceX agreed to acquire in an all-stock deal valued at $60 billion, announced June 16. Cursor played a central role in the development and rollout of Grok 4.6.
That acquisition followed the official merger of SpaceX and Musk’s xAI on February 2 of this year, consolidating Musk’s AI ambitions under one roof.
At his all-hands meeting Tuesday, Musk projected that AI-based internet traffic will be 1,000 times human internet traffic within five years.
SPCX stock is still trading above its $135 offer price from when it began trading on June 12. After the Grok 4.6 announcement, the stock hit $142.64 at 11:57 am ET on Wednesday before giving back some ground overnight.
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