Global AI corporations that have led the race for artificial intelligence (AI) model performance are now moving into a price war.
On the 30th (local time), OpenAI said it would cut enterprise API fees for its latest AI model, "GPT-5.6," by up to 80%. The target is the mid- and low-priced models unveiled just three weeks ago, signaling a full-scale entry into price competition to win corporate clients. The mid-tier model "GPT-5.6 Terra" was cut 20% to $2–$12 per 1 million tokens. The budget model "GPT-5.6 Luna" was cut 80% to $0.2–$1.2 per 1 million tokens.
The top-end model "GPT-5.6 Sol" kept its price. Instead, a new high-speed mode was added that offers 2.5 times faster processing at twice the previous fee.
The cut applies to application programming interface (API) fees used by developers and corporations, and ChatGPT personal subscription prices are unchanged. However, in personal ChatGPT, usage limits for the models will expand in proportion to the reduced expense. OpenAI said the cuts were made possible by efficiency improvements across AI infrastructure, including models, inference systems, and agent consolidation methods.
The industry views the move as a strategy to expand market share among corporations. In particular, there is analysis that OpenAI, which is pursuing an initial public offering (IPO), strengthened its price competitiveness to keep rival Anthropic in check in the enterprise AI market.
The competitive landscape in the AI industry is also shifting from performance-centric to cost efficiency-centric. Until now, AI corporations have engaged in a so-called "Token Maxing" race to enable the use of more tokens, but as the burden of AI operating expense grows among corporate clients, demand is expanding to consider both performance and price.
Rivals are taking similar approaches. On the 25th, Anthropic launched "Claude Opus 5," which has performance close to the top-end "Claude Fable 5," while setting the price at about half. In addition, with the rapid spread of open-weight AI models from Chinese corporations, including MoonshotAI's "Kimi K3," there is an assessment that this is influencing U.S. AI corporations' price-cut competition.