OpenAI just cut its AI prices by 80% three weeks after launch — and China is the reason

GPT-5.6 Luna dropped from $1 to 20 cents per million tokens overnight. When a frontier lab slashes prices this fast, it's not generosity — it's a… Aliteq Lena Fischer · AI & Local Compute Editor

GPT-5.6 Luna cut 80% — from $1/$6 to $0.20/$1.20 per million input/output tokens, on July 30.

Terra cut 20% ($2.50/$15 → $2/$12); the flagship Sol unchanged at $5/$30.

Just three weeks after the GPT-5.6 launch (July 9) — an unusually fast repricing.

The driver: cheap Chinese models. They've captured ~46% of US enterprise token usage on OpenRouter.

DeepSeek V4 Pro sits at $0.435/$0.87 per million tokens with a standing 75% discount — brutal price pressure.

OpenAI's stated reason: efficiency gains. The real reason: competition on cost.

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