AI PRICE WAR — UPDATED PRICING TABLE (AUGUST 15, 2026)
● GPT-5.6 Luna: $0.20/$1.20/M (was $1/$6 — 80% cut on July 30). ChatGPT free default from Aug 6.
● GPT-5.6 Terra: $2/$12/M (was $2.50/$15 — 20% cut on July 30)
● GPT-5.6 Sol: $5/$30/M — unchanged
● Grok 4.6: $2/$6/M — unchanged (launched Aug 12)
● Claude Sonnet 5: $2/$10/M → $3/$15/M from Sept 1 (16 days)
● DeepSeek V4 Flash: $0.14→$0.27/M input (93% increase — effective Aug 14)
● Gemini 3.6 Flash: $1.50/$7.50/M — unchanged
● Claude Opus 5: $5/$25/M — unchanged
● GPT-5.6 Sol Fast: $10/$60/M — NEW (2.5x speed of standard Sol at 2x price)
● Gemini app: 1 billion monthly active users (announced Aug 11 by Sundar Pichai)
The OpenAI Price Cuts — What Changed and Why
Per VentureBeat's analysis of the cuts, OpenAI reduced GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% on July 30, 2026 — from $1/$6/M to $0.20/$1.20/M — attributing the reduction to efficiency improvements from internal model development, including the model's role in optimizing production software and improving speculative decoding. Terra fell 20% from $2.50/$15/M to $2/$12/M. Sol's pricing remains unchanged at $5/$30/M. As Weckr's pricing analysis notes, the Luna cut has a subtle but significant implication: Luna at $0.20/$1.20/M now undercuts gpt-5.4-nano ($0.20/$1.25/M) on output price while being a more capable model. "The floor of the OpenAI lineup effectively moved up a capability tier at the same price." Any team that routed traffic to gpt-5.4-mini ($0.75/$4.50/M) purely for cost reasons now has a better option at the same capability tier.
Per Tech Insider Canada's full timeline, the cuts coincided with OpenAI making Luna the default model for free and Go-tier ChatGPT users starting August 6, with unlimited text chats and a "Think" reasoning toggle. The timing maps directly onto OpenAI's competitive pressure: TechSpot reports that ChatGPT's global web traffic share fell from ~79% in May 2025 to 53.9% in May 2026, with Gemini climbing to 27.7% of AI assistant app users. Making a capable model free and unlimited is OpenAI's retention lever.
DeepSeek Is Raising Prices While Everyone Else Cuts
The move that inverts the expected pattern: DeepSeek raised deepseek-v4-flash input prices from $0.14/M to $0.27/M effective August 14 — a 93% increase. Per Tech Startups's August 14 roundup, "OpenAI and Anthropic are lowering prices on some models as lower-cost Chinese competitors including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI gain users among companies looking to control increasingly large inference bills" — and simultaneously DeepSeek is raising its prices as demand exceeds its infrastructure capacity. The deepseek-v4-flash that was the cheapest capable agentic model at $0.14/M on July 31 is now $0.27/M. Still cheaper than most alternatives, but the gap has narrowed significantly. Combined with the October 24 deprecation deadline for deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner, this week's price increase adds urgency to the migration calculus.
Gemini Crosses 1 Billion Monthly Active Users
Per AI Weekly's coverage, Sundar Pichai announced on August 11 that the Gemini app has crossed 1 billion monthly active users — Google's fastest-growing product ever and its 14th product to hit the billion-user mark alongside Search, Gmail, Android, and YouTube. TechCrunch reports 63% of users engage with voice features. The milestone arrives as OpenAI reports its own 1 billion monthly active users (crossed June 2026). For the first time in AI's consumer history, two AI assistants are simultaneously at the 1 billion MAU mark.
Updated Routing Guide — What to Use at Each Price Point Now
| Use case | Best model now | Input price | Notes |
|---|
| High-volume classification/routing | GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.20/M | Was $1/M before July 30. Now OpenAI's cheapest. |
| Mid-tier general tasks | Gemini 3.6 Flash | $1.50/M | 1M context, Search grounding, 304 t/s |
| Writing/long-form (act before Aug 31) | Claude Sonnet 5 | $2/M now → $3/M Sept 1 | Best writing quality. 16 days at $2/M. |
| Agentic coding under 200K tokens | Grok 4.6 | $2/M | APEX-Agents leader. Doubles above 200K. |
| Frontier reasoning / hard tasks | Claude Opus 5 | $5/M | AA Index 61, ARC-AGI-3 30.2%, stable pricing |
| Repo-scale coding + async PR | GPT-5.6 Sol | $5/M | DeepSWE leader, Codex async PR |
Anthropic's 20-Year Riot Platforms Data Centre Lease
Alongside the Theseus Infrastructure JV announced August 10, Riot Platforms disclosed a 20-year data centre lease at its Rockdale, Texas campus — Bloomberg identified the tenant as Anthropic. The deal covers 191 MW, runs through June 2048, and carries approximately $9.1 billion in base revenue with two five-year extension options that could push total value to $16.1 billion. This is separate from Theseus (which targets new purpose-built facilities) and the existing AWS $100B+ commitment. Anthropic is simultaneously building its infrastructure stack through multiple channels: Macquarie/GIC JV for new construction, long-term leases for existing capacity (Riot/Rockdale), and cloud commitments to AWS for on-demand access.
Sources: VentureBeat price war analysis · Weckr routing guide · TechSpot — 1B users + price cuts · Quartz — OpenAI 1B announcement · Tech Insider Canada — Luna free default · AI Weekly — Gemini 1B users · Tech Startups August 14 roundup · Related: Sonnet 5 Aug 31 deadline → · Anthropic Theseus data centres →