GPT-5.6 Luna drops 80% to $0.20 per million input tokens as ChatGPT reaches ~1bn weekly users
Luna fell from $1/$6 to $0.20/$1.20 per million tokens, Terra took a 20% cut, and flagship Sol held at $5/$30. The cut landed roughly three weeks after the GPT-5.6 family launched. Weekly active users are reported at around one billion.
Cutting a tier by 80% three weeks after launch is not a planned pricing curve. It is a response, and the shape of it — deep discount at the cheap end, nothing at the top — says the pressure is coming from below rather than from a competitor's flagship.
Holding Sol at $5/$30 while gutting Luna is a deliberate widening of the ladder. It says the company believes frontier capability still commands a premium and that everything beneath it is now a commodity to be defended on price.
A billion weekly users against those unit economics is the number that makes the discount survivable and also the number that makes it necessary. At that volume a fifth of the previous price is still a very large business, and being undercut at that volume is existential.
CNBC — OpenAI cuts prices for two of its GPT-5.6 AI models as companies grow sensitive to costs → · VentureBeat — AI price wars: OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Luna prices by 80% as competition shifts toward cost → · Forbes — Why OpenAI's 80% price cut could trigger a race to the bottom in AI →