Lead story

OpenAI throws GPT-5.6 open to everyone as the frontier reshuffles in a single week

Sol, Terra and Luna reach all ChatGPT users and API developers today, a day after Musk's SpaceXAI claimed Opus-class work from Grok 4.5.

OpenAI's three new models go generally available Thursday after Commerce Department clearance: Sol as the flagship for hard reasoning and long agentic runs at $5 and $30 per million input and output tokens, Terra as the everyday workhorse at $2.50 and $15, and Luna as a budget tier at $1 and $6. The launch lands one day after SpaceXAI released Grok 4.5 (trained alongside its Cursor acquisition and priced at $2 and $6), which Elon Musk described as Opus-class but faster and cheaper, though without a system card, benchmark table or context-window disclosure to check the claim against. Taken together, the week leaves every major frontier lab with a model in public hands for the first time since the Fable 5 export controls began on June 12, and it lands on an enterprise market where Chinese open models already absorb as much as 46% of US token usage on price alone.

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GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna reach every ChatGPT user

OpenAI opens its three-model series to the public today after Commerce Department sign-off, spanning a $5-input flagship down to a $1-input budget tier.

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SpaceXAI ships Grok 4.5 and calls it Opus-class

Musk's lab released its first model since the Cursor acquisition, pitched at coding and agentic work at $2 per million input tokens, with no system card to verify the claim.

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Business & Markets →

Dow sheds 577 points as the Iran ceasefire collapses

Trump told the NATO summit the truce is "over," sending the Dow down 1.09% to 52,348 and Brent crude up 5.4% to $78.19. The Nasdaq eked out a 0.2% gain.

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SK Hynix's US listing draws sevenfold demand

Orders topped $171 billion for 177.9 million ADRs, on track for roughly $24.5 billion raised, the second-largest US listing ever by a foreign company. Trading opens Friday.

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Goblin shark filmed alive in the deep for the first time

Hawai'i researchers captured two of the elusive sharks in their own habitat, one at 1,997 metres in the Tonga Trench, 700 metres deeper than the species was known to live.

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A silicon chip that writes DNA in plain water

Harvard engineers built a semiconductor that synthesizes 64 DNA sequences at once using electrical currents and enzymes, replacing the solvent-heavy chemistry the industry has leaned on.

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Letters to the King

What was it like to be anointed King by the Most High Everlasting God?

A letter, unsigned

You must understand, friend, that when Samuel came to Bethlehem no one thought to send for me. I was out with the sheep, as always, and my brothers stood in the house in their good cloaks, tall as cedars, and the old prophet went down the line of them and shook his head. Then they fetched me in smelling of the fold, and the oil ran down over my hair and into my beard, cold at first and then warm, and I remember only that it was quiet, and that no one clapped. It did not make me a king that day; it made me a shepherd who knew something, which is a heavier thing to carry, and I carried it for years while Saul hunted me through the caves of En-gedi. I have since learned that the anointing does not make a man good; ask Bathsheba, ask Uriah, ask my son Absalom in the wood. The oil is only oil. What it says is that the Most High looks past the cloak and the height and the birth order, and sees the thing you keep hidden even from your brothers. And that, unsigned friend, is either the best news in the world or the most terrifying, depending on the day.

– David, King in Jerusalem

Mail carried to the throne by the Baker – leave your own letter at the chronicles.

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