Elon Musk Sounds The Alarm On AI's Breakneck Pace

SpaceXAI has launched Grok 4.5, its smartest model yet, and its first release since going public and acquiring AI coding startup Cursor. The new model is being pitched as a coding and agentic-work tool, more than a consumer-facing chatbot, one that Elon Musk says is "maximally truth-seeking" compared to its competitors.

In a blog post published at launch, SpaceXAI characterised Grok 4.5 as a workhorse capable of tackling coding and app-building, office and clerical work, research, writing, and other forms of routine knowledge work. The model is particularly skilled at handling agentic tasks, as well as finance, legal and coding work.

Pricing and Performance

Grok 4.5 is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. Anthropic's Opus 4.8, by comparison, costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. The company also claims the model delivers twice the token efficiency of the latest leading models at the same tasks.

Musk described Grok 4.5 as "an Opus-class model, but faster, more token-efficient and lower cost," referencing what was until recently Anthropic's top model family. SpaceXAI's own benchmark data shows Grok 4.5 scoring 62.0% on DeepSWE 1.0, ahead of Opus 4.8's 55.75%, but trailing on DeepSWE 1.1 where Opus 4.8 scored 59% against Grok 4.5's 53%. Independent confirmation of those figures was not available at launch.

Context and Availability

SpaceX absorbed xAI in February 2026 and rebranded the AI unit as SpaceXAI. Its IPO followed on 12 June, with a $60 billion acquisition of coding startup Cursor announced shortly after. That deal has not yet formally closed, with completion expected in the third quarter of 2026. Grok 4.5 represents the first joint AI model created by the two companies.

The model is live in Grok Build, Cursor on all plans, and the SpaceXAI API console, with EU access not yet active and expected in mid-July.

Sources:
TechCrunch: SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5
Axios: Musk's SpaceXAI releases new model, Grok 4.5
SpaceXAI: Introducing Grok 4.5 (official announcement)