Key Points
- SPCX shares jumped almost 10% following Elon Musk’s declaration that SpaceX “must win in AI”
- The company unveiled Grok 4.6, marketing it as a cost-effective alternative to ChatGPT and Claude
- Pricing for Grok 4.6 stands at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output, significantly below competitors
- Artificial Analysis, an AI evaluation company, placed Grok at the “intelligence frontier alongside OpenAI”
- Shares retreated 0.3% to $145.65 during Thursday’s premarket session, maintaining levels above the $135 IPO price
Shares of SpaceX (SPCX) declined 0.3% to $145.65 during Thursday’s premarket trading, retreating from a nearly 10% surge recorded in the prior session.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPCX
The previous day’s momentum followed CEO Elon Musk’s declaration during a company-wide meeting: “We must win in AI because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots.”
The aerospace company backed up that message with Wednesday’s unveiling of Grok 4.6. This latest iteration represents a “frontier intelligence” enhancement over Grok 4.5, while maintaining identical pricing.
On X, Musk characterized the release as “Smart, fast & amazing bang for buck.”
Grok 4.6’s Competitive Price Structure
SpaceX is making its most aggressive move through pricing strategy. The company set Grok 4.6 rates at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens.
By contrast, Anthropic charges $5 per million input and $25 per million output for Claude Opus 5. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol is priced at $5 per million input and $30 per million output.
The company markets Grok 4.6 as offering “half the price of other frontier models,” a claim supported by the comparative data.
According to Artificial Analysis, a leading AI benchmarking organization, this release positions SpaceX AI “back to the intelligence frontier alongside OpenAI, behind only Anthropic.”
Addressing Past Shortcomings
Earlier versions of Grok drew scrutiny for elevated hallucination frequencies and overconfidence when addressing factual queries compared to Claude and ChatGPT. Reviewers observed the model’s reluctance to acknowledge knowledge gaps.
The company evidently incorporated this criticism into the latest version.
Access to the updated model is provided via Grok Build, Cursor, Grok Bot, and the API platform. During the initial week, Cursor and Grok Build subscribers receive doubled usage allowances.
Cursor represents the AI-powered coding environment developed by Anysphere, which SpaceX committed to purchasing through an all-stock transaction worth $60 billion, disclosed on June 16. The platform was instrumental in creating and deploying Grok 4.6.
This purchase came after SpaceX formally combined with Musk’s xAI on February 2 this year, bringing Musk’s artificial intelligence initiatives under unified management.
During Tuesday’s company gathering, Musk forecasted that AI-generated internet traffic would exceed human-generated traffic by a factor of 1,000 within the next five years.
SPCX shares continue trading above their $135 offering price from the June 12 market debut. Following the Grok 4.6 announcement, the stock reached $142.64 at 11:57 am ET Wednesday before experiencing modest overnight losses.
Get 3 Free Stock Ebooks
Discover top-performing stocks in AI, Crypto, and Technology with expert analysis.
- Top 10 AI Stocks - Leading AI companies
- Top 10 Crypto Stocks - Blockchain leaders
- Top 10 Tech Stocks - Tech giants
