Mercury 2.5 Ships at 1,107 Tokens a Second and Four Cents a Million
A phone agent startup says Mercury cut its worst-case response from minutes to one second. Inception Labs' new diffusion model is built around that kind of number.
Seung Jung·
5m#llm-pricing
Washington's $1 ChatGPT Deal Expires. Its Replacement Bills by the Token.
OpenAI's new 27-month GSA deal waives a $15 per-seat license and halves token rates, but replaces a $1-a-year flat fee with metered billing from October 1.
Seung Jung·
5m
Cognition's SWE-2 Gets Within a Point of the Frontier for 64% Less
Cognition says SWE-2 scores 50.0% on FrontierCode 1.1 Main, a point behind Fable 5.1, at 64% lower cost — built on an open Chinese base model.
Seung Jung·
5m
Ox Alpha Unmasked: Z.ai Ships GLM-5.3-Flash With MIT Weights and 15-Cent Pricing
Z.ai confirmed the stealth Ox Alpha model is GLM-5.3-Flash: 320B parameters, 18B active, MIT-licensed weights and sub-dollar output pricing.
Seung Jung·
4m
Stripe Reportedly Buys OpenRouter for Over $7B, Putting a Price on the Model Routing Layer
Bloomberg reports Stripe has finalised a deal to buy AI gateway OpenRouter for more than $7B, five times the startup's $1.3B valuation from May.
Seung Jung·
3m
Mixedbread Bets Search Should Be a Cheap Specialist, Not a Frontier Model
Mixedbread launched Toast 1, a specialised search agent it says matches frontier models at up to 10x lower cost and cuts legal-benchmark tokens by 3.5x.
Seung Jung·
4m
Grok 4.6 Reaches the AI Frontier Without Raising Its Price
xAI's Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, matching GPT-5.6 Sol while holding pricing flat at $2/$6 per million tokens.
Seung Jung·
5m