{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-12-grok-4-6/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-12-grok-4-6/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-08-12-grok-4-6","date":"2026-08-12","date_precision":"day","short_title":"SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.6, matching GPT-5.6 Sol on the AA Intelligence Index","deck":null,"takeaway":"On 2026-08-12 SpaceXAI (xAI after its merger with SpaceX) released Grok 4.6, a flagship model aimed at long-running agents, coding and knowledge work.","category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Introducing Grok 4.6 | SpaceXAI","url":"https://x.ai/news/grok-4-6","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.ai"},{"n":2,"title":"SpaceXAI - Grok 4.6 on Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform","url":"https://x.ai/news/grok-4-6-vertex-ai","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.ai"},{"n":3,"title":"SpaceXAI - Grok 4.6 on Microsoft Foundry","url":"https://x.ai/news/grok-4-6-microsoft-foundry","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.ai"},{"n":4,"title":"SpaceXAI - Grok 4.6 on Amazon Bedrock","url":"https://x.ai/news/grok-4-6-amazon-bedrock","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.ai"},{"n":5,"title":"SpaceXAI - Grok 4.6 in GitHub Copilot","url":"https://x.ai/news/grok-4-6-github-copilot","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.ai"},{"n":6,"title":"SpaceXAI - Biosecurity at the frontier (LatchBio evaluation)","url":"https://x.ai/news/biosafety-at-the-frontier","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.ai"},{"n":7,"title":"9to5Mac - SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.6","url":"https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/12/spacexai-releases-grok-4-6/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"9to5mac.com"},{"n":8,"title":"DataNorth - xAI releases Grok 4.6 flagship model","url":"https://datanorth.ai/news/xai-releases-grok-4-6","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"datanorth.ai"}],"official":6,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-30","orgs":["xAI","SpaceX"],"title":"SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.6, matching GPT-5.6 Sol on the AA Intelligence Index","summary":"On 2026-08-12 SpaceXAI (xAI after its merger with SpaceX) released Grok 4.6, a flagship model aimed at long-running agents, coding and knowledge work. It scored 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index - tied with OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and one point behind Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 - at $2/$6 per million input/output tokens.","key_facts":["Released 2026-08-12; builds on Grok 4.5","Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 61 (ties GPT-5.6 Sol at max reasoning; 1 point behind Claude Fable 5 Max)","GDPVal-AA v2: 1753; CursorBench v3.2: 69.9%; DeepSWE v1.1: 65.9%; FrontierCode v1.1: 61.3% (xAI)","Price: $2 per 1M input tokens, $6 per 1M output tokens; fast variant costs 2x","Available in Grok Build, Cursor, xAI API (console.x.ai), OpenRouter, Vercel and Cloudflare","2x included usage in Cursor and Grok Build for the first week","Reported (DataNorth): 500,000-token context window and knowledge cutoff of 2026-02-01","xAI attributes gains to a longer supplemental training run, stronger engineering data and expanded RL for coding and knowledge work","Cloud availability: Amazon Bedrock (Aug 19), Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform / Vertex Model Garden (Aug 21; $2 input, $0.50 cached, $6 output per 1M tokens), Microsoft Foundry (Aug 26); GitHub Copilot from Aug 14","xAI's partner posts confirm a 500K-token context window and reasoning effort low/medium/high/xhigh","LatchBio independent bio evaluation (xAI post, Sept 1): on BioSecBench-Refusal Grok 4.6 averaged 62.1% (harmonic mean), refusing 59.2% of disguised red-team tasks and completing 64.8% of routine ones, the only model above 50% on both; BioSecBench-Surveillance 53.5% (behind Opus 5, ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol)"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["grok","xai","spacexai","llm","coding","agents"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nSpaceXAI released **Grok 4.6** on 2026-08-12, positioning it for tasks that stay open across many steps: research,\nanalysis, working across a codebase, and turning an idea into a finished app or artifact, with improved self-testing\nand verification on long task sequences and stronger first drafts of visual/interactive projects.\n\nxAI-reported benchmarks: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 61, GDPVal-AA v2 1753, CursorBench v3.2 69.9%,\nDeepSWE v1.1 65.9%, FrontierCode v1.1 61.3%. Pricing is $2 / $6 per million input/output tokens, with a faster\nvariant at double the price. It launched in Cursor, xAI's Grok Build coding tool, the xAI API, OpenRouter, Vercel\nand Cloudflare.\n\nGrok 5 was **not** released: as of September 2026 trackers report it still in training (reportedly on the\nColossus 2 cluster in Memphis), with no official model card.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nGrok 4.6 put xAI level with OpenAI's then-current flagship on the most-cited aggregate index, at a notably low price,\nand signaled xAI's pivot toward coding/agentic workloads distributed through Cursor and its own Grok Build tool.\n\nThe 500K context window and knowledge-cutoff figures come from secondary coverage (DataNorth), not the official post.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-09-21-grok-4-7","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-21-grok-4-7/","date":"2026-09-21","date_precision":"day","short_title":"SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.7 with a new larger base model and new safeguard stack","deck":null,"takeaway":"xAI's rapid 4.x cadence (4.5 -> 4.6 -> 4.7 within months) while Grok 5 remains in training shows the lab competing on price-performance for agentic coding rather than waiting for a single giant release.","category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["xAI","SpaceX"]},{"id":"2026-02-02-spacex-acquires-xai","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-02-02-spacex-acquires-xai/","date":"2026-02-02","date_precision":"day","short_title":"SpaceX absorbs xAI in a $1.25 trillion merger","deck":null,"takeaway":"It fused a frontier AI lab with the world's dominant launch provider and a large satellite network, giving xAI access to public-market capital (via the June 2026 SpaceX IPO) and a unique compute-in-space thesis.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":0,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["SpaceX","xAI"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-30","type":"edit","text":"Added cloud availability posts (Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry, Copilot), confirmed 500K context and effort levels, and the LatchBio biosecurity evaluation"},{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-30","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":104,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":43,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":134,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":73,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":"https://postcutoff.com/s/spacexai-grok-4-6-matching"}