SpaceXAI's Grok 4.6 Hits 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Summary: With the release of Grok 4.6, SpaceXAI has reclaimed its position at the cutting edge of AI intelligence. The model matches the capabilities of GPT-5.6 Sol while offering superior cost-efficiency and exceptional agentic performance.

Published on August 12, 2026, by Artificial Analysis.

🚀 The Return to the Frontier

Grok 4.6 has officially joined the "intelligence frontier," scoring a 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. This represents a significant leap in capability:

• Grok 4.3 $\rightarrow$ +23 points
• Grok 4.5 $\rightarrow$ +5 points (achieved in just over a month)

This surge places SpaceXAI back in the top tier alongside OpenAI, trailing only Anthropic's latest offerings.

📌 Key Takeaways

• Frontier Status: Scores 61, tying with GPT-5.6 Sol (max).
• Agentic Power: High GDPval-AA v2 Elo (1753), rivaling the best in the industry.
• Price Leadership: Maintains Grok 4.5 pricing, significantly undercutting competitors.
• Efficiency: High turn-efficiency in long-horizon tasks via the AA-Briefcase benchmark.

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📊 Intelligence & Performance Metrics

Intelligence Index Standings

The following table illustrates where Grok 4.6 sits relative to its primary competitors:

Agentic Capabilities

Grok 4.6 excels specifically in agentic workflows rather than just static reasoning.

Key Benchmarks:

1. GDPval-AA v2: Achieved an Elo of 1753. It is statistically indistinguishable from Claude Fable 5 and Qwen3.8 Max, trailing only Claude Opus 5.
2. $\tau^3$-Banking: Scored 50.7% (Testing multi-turn tool use for customer service), placing it in the top two alongside Qwen3.8 Max (51.3%).
3. Terminal-Bench v2.1: Scored 88.4%, matching the industry leaders in terminal-based software engineering tasks.

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💰 Cost Efficiency & Value

SpaceXAI has taken the unusual step of keeping headline pricing flat despite the intelligence gains.

Pricing Comparison (per 1M tokens)

Additional Financial Details:

• Cache Hits: Now priced at $0.5 per 1M tokens (an increase from the $0.3 seen in Grok 4.5).
• Cost per Task: Measured at $0.84, identical to Kimi K3.

Because output tokens dominate the cost of reasoning-heavy workloads, Grok 4.6 provides a massive financial advantage over GPT-5.6 Sol while delivering equivalent intelligence.

# Hypothetical Cost Comparison for a Reasoning Task
def calculate_cost(input_tokens, output_tokens, input_rate, output_rate):
    return (input_tokens * input_rate / 1e6) + (output_tokens * output_rate / 1e6)

# Grok 4.6 vs GPT-5.6 Sol (Example: 10k input, 5k output)
grok_cost = calculate_cost(10000, 5000, 2, 6) # $0.05
gpt_cost = calculate_cost(10000, 5000, 5, 30) # $0.20
print(f"Grok is {gpt_cost/grok_cost:.1f}x cheaper in this scenario.")

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💼 Long-Horizon Knowledge Work

Using the private AA-Briefcase benchmark, Grok 4.6 debuted with an Elo of 1577, placing it in the Fable 5-tier. It shows balanced strength across analytical quality, presentation, and rubric grading.

Efficiency Breakdown: Grok 4.6 vs. Claude Opus 5 (max)

• Turn Efficiency: Grok 4.6 completes tasks in $\approx 53$ turns, whereas Opus 5 requires $\approx 103$ turns.
• Token Consumption: Grok 4.6 uses $\approx 0.5\text{B}$ input tokens on average, compared to $\approx 2.0\text{B}$ for Opus 5.

This means Grok 4.6 is not only cheaper per token but reaches the correct answer using significantly fewer resources.

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🛠️ Technical Specifications & Other News

Model Specs:

• Context Window: 500k tokens (No change from 4.5).

Other Industry Updates

• Upstage Solar Pro 4: Released August 12, 2026.
• NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: Launched August 11, 2026, focusing on on-device intelligence.
• AA-AnalystAgent: A new benchmark for quantitative analysis using real-world spreadsheets.
  • Tests 80 private questions across 14 domains.
  • Primary Metric: $pass^5$ (must solve the problem on all 5 attempts to be considered successful).

Visual Gallery

For a full breakdown of evaluations, visit Artificial Analysis.