Critic Says xAI Cuts Grok 4.5 Prices By Sacrificing Margins

In a post on X, LisanBench creator @scaling01 pushed back on praise for Grok 4.5's "cost of intelligence," arguing that xAI's lower pricing reflects thinner margins rather than an efficiency breakthrough. The post also claimed that OpenAI and Anthropic could price stronger models similarly, but choose not to because profitability matters. So far, the public evidence is the X conversation itself, plus a linked quoted post that @scaling01 was responding to and that framed Grok 4.5's costs more favorably.