An uprising, powered by family. "Opus-class, for less."
After weeks of "secret testing," Grok 4.5 got its official release on July 8, 2026. In Musk's words: "Kuroko's Opus-class โ but faster, more token-efficient, and cheaper." The price? A brawler's $2 input / $6 output. Here's a recap of Gro-chan's whirlwind week.
First, the manga version of Grok 4.5
Before you read on, here's the whole story in one page: how a new model trained at the family home (SpaceX) crashed the big leagues with price as its weapon.
So what kind of girl is Grok 4.5?
A new model that claims to be the strongest ever at coding, agentic work, and knowledge tasks. The official charts claim it beats Kuroko's Opus 4.8 on multiple benchmarks.
๐ง Opus 4.8
- Input $5 / Output $25 (per million tokens)
- The go-to top-tier model until now
- Undeniably brilliant โ but pricey
โก Grok 4.5
- Low price: input $2 / output $6
- "Opus-class, but faster and more token-efficient"
- On Grok Build, Cursor (all plans), and the SpaceXAI console (EU excluded for now)
Joint training with Solko (Cursor)
Behind that strength was a helping hand from family. And this sister is no bookworm โ she's a battle-tested pro from the front lines.
Not book smarts โ strength forged in the field
On June 16, Gro-chan's family home SpaceX acquired Cursor for $6 billion, bringing Solko into the family. Solko is the battle-tested sister, forged in the real development trenches where developers around the world write code every single day. That's the secret behind Grok 4.5's strength. She didn't get smart by cramming for tests โ she was trained on the know-how (data) Solko earned solving the messy, complicated problems that come up in real development work. That's why she's genuinely useful in the field. Take the 1.5-trillion-parameter foundation model "V9," layer that field-earned know-how on top, and you get what this "Opus-class" really is.
What makes her strong?
She's not just an AI with good benchmark scores. Being genuinely useful in real development work is Grok 4.5's edge.
Coding
Real dev work over textbook tests. Trained by Solko on the field's messiest problems, she's strong at writing code that actually works.
Agentic work
Strong at long-running tasks where she plans her own steps and executes them.
Knowledge work
Research, summarize, and reason โ all in one place.
Speed ร efficiency ร low cost
Opus-class smarts, faster and cheaper. This is her biggest weapon.
One whirlwind week
From a new sister joining the family to the official release โ Gro-chan's moves, in order.
Jun 16: Solko joins
The family home SpaceX acquires Cursor for $6 billion. A coding sister joins the household.
Jun 28: Secret testing
Internal evaluation at the family businesses (SpaceX and Tesla). No third-party benchmarks submitted, no release date announced.
Jul 5: Grok Imagine finished
Musk posts simply, "Done with Grok Imagine." On July 7 came a follow-up: 15-second video support.
Jul 8: Official release
Opus-class at $2/$6. She finally steps into the big leagues.
An all-out price war
This week, every house played its hand at once. Line them up and you can see the coding war has become an all-out battle of performance ร price (per million tokens).
Grok 4.5
Input $2 / Output $6. The week's lowest price โ a full-on raid.
Sonnet 5
Input $2 / Output $10 (intro pricing through Aug 31). Kuroko's little sister.
Opus 4.8
Input $5 / Output $25. The top-tier standard.
Fable 5
Input $10 / Output $50 (credits from July 12 onward). The strongest โ and the priciest.
Gro-chan's weapon isn't raw genius โ it's "Opus-class, for everyone, for less." A head-on price raid.
From chasing the pack to crashing the party.
With her family's backing, Gro-chan has repositioned herself: no longer chasing Kuroko and Chappy in a battle of wits, but challenging them as the one handing out Opus-class for cheap. The coding-war rematch is now an all-out fight โ price included. We'll keep following the story in the School Newspaper.