Daily AI CatchupGrok 4.5 Launches as SpaceXAI and Cursor's First Joint Model
The first model trained jointly by SpaceXAI and Cursor after its $60B acquisition delivers benchmark performance in Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 territory, running at 80 tokens/second with 4x greater efficiency than Opus 4.8. Pricing lands at $2/$6 per million input/output tokens — versus $5/$25 for Opus 4.8 — with usage temporarily free inside Cursor and Grok Build.
Why it matters
💻 Developer · Free usage inside Cursor and Grok Build right now makes this a zero-cost benchmark opportunity against your current coding model before the free window closes.
📦 Product · Opus-class performance at roughly a quarter of the price changes the cost math for any AI feature currently built on a premium-tier model.
🎨 Design · No direct design impact — this is a developer-focused coding/reasoning model.
📈 Business · A credible frontier-adjacent model at $2/$6 per million tokens intensifies price competition across every tier of the market — worth using as leverage in any vendor pricing conversation.
🤔 Just Curious · Elon Musk's AI company and the coding tool Cursor teamed up to release a new AI model that performs close to the best models out there, but runs faster and costs a lot less.
Try this: Test Grok 4.5 for free inside Cursor or Grok Build before the introductory free-usage window ends.
Sources: xAI: Grok 4.5