AUGUST 15, 2026 — AI PRICE WAR · DEEPSEEK PRICE HIKE · GEMINI 1B USERS
- GPT-5.6 Luna: 80% price cut + ChatGPT free default: Luna cut July 30 from $1/$6/M to $0.20/$1.20/M — now cheaper than gpt-5.4-nano. Made ChatGPT free default August 6 with unlimited chats and Think toggle. Terra cut 20% to $2/$12/M. Sol unchanged. GPT-5.6 Sol Fast launched: 2.5x speed at 2x price ($10/$60/M). OpenAI: 1B monthly active users, 2M+ businesses. Full pricing table + routing guide →
- DeepSeek raises V4 Flash 93%: deepseek-v4-flash input: $0.14→$0.27/M (Aug 14). Still cheaper than most alternatives but the gap has narrowed. Oct 24: deepseek-chat + deepseek-reasoner deprecated — migrate now. DeepSeek V4 Flash review →
- Gemini app crosses 1 billion MAU: Sundar Pichai announced August 11. Google's fastest-growing product ever, 14th to hit 1B (alongside Search, Gmail, Android, YouTube). 63% engage voice features. ChatGPT also crossed 1B MAU in June 2026 — first time two AI assistants simultaneously at 1B. Context →
What the Price War Means for Your Stack — Act Before August 31
Three actions worth taking now based on today's pricing picture. First: if you are routing high-volume classification, summarisation, or lightweight tasks to gpt-5.4-mini ($0.75/M) or older OpenAI models, reroute to GPT-5.6 Luna at $0.20/M — more capable model, lower price. Per Weckr's analysis, any hardcoded price table referencing Luna at $1/M is now overstating the cost by 5x. Second: if you run DeepSeek V4 Flash in production, note the 93% input price increase from August 14 — update your cost models. The October 24 deprecation of deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner is approaching (70 days). Third: Claude Sonnet 5 goes from $2 to $3/M on August 31 — 16 days to front-load batch work. Aug 31 action plan →