**OpenAI Drops GPT-5.6 Sol and New Models in Crowded AI Race**
OpenAI has officially launched its new GPT-5.6 Sol model, making it available to the public after a brief two-week preview that was previously restricted to about 20 trusted partners under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The release introduces a fresh naming strategy for the company, marking the first time OpenAI has assigned names—Sol, Terra, and Luna—to its models instead of relying on numerical designations. These names denote capability tiers, with Sol as the flagship, Terra positioned as the cost-effective alternative that matches GPT-5.5 at half the price, and Luna as an even more affordable option.
Performance-wise, Sol in ultra mode has demonstrated strong results, achieving a 91.9% score on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and matching Anthropic’s restricted Mythos Preview on ExploitBench while using roughly one-third of the tokens. Standard Sol also performed impressively, hitting 88.8% on the same benchmark. In terms of pricing, Sol costs $5 and $30 per million input and output tokens in ultra mode, while Luna is priced at $1 and $6, positioning it between high-end U.S. models and lower-cost competitors from China, such as DeepSeek and Xiaomi.
The launch comes at a busy time for AI, with Grok 4.5 from xAI released just one day earlier and Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 dropping hours before. This leaves Google’s Gemini 3.1 as the oldest flagship model still standing among major U.S. labs, having been launched in November 2025.
Early user feedback has been positive, with prominent developers describing Sol as “world leading in computer use” and preferable to earlier versions like GPT-5.5. Some have noted its speed and capability make it feel like a “daily driver,” while others highlight its strong performance in cybersecurity and even life-science inquiries due to more permissive safeguards. Industry observers also suggest that GPT-5.6 could be the final model in the 5.x series, with GPT-6 potentially arriving soon.
Given the rapid succession of releases from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Meta, the AI landscape is shifting quickly. Google now faces pressure to respond with an updated flagship of its own.
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**Source:** Decrypt, “OpenAI Has Released GPT-5.6 Sol, Alongside the Cheaper Terra and Luna,” July 2026. [https://www.decrypt.co](https://www.decrypt.co)
