# Grok 4.6 Delayed Past August 7: Expected This Week

Grok 4.6 missed its August 7 launch. Musk's Aug 4 call pushed the window to Aug 10–14. No model card, benchmarks, or API. The model stays pending.

By Neomanex. Updated 2026-10-07.

[Grok 4.6](/models/grok-4-6) has not shipped as of August 12 — Musk's "around August 7" target has passed with no model card, no API endpoint, no benchmark table, and no official statement from SpaceXAI explaining the delay. Our directory verdict stays **pending** until the model ships with independent evaluation.

## What happened with Grok 4.6

Elon Musk first pegged Grok 4.6 to "around August 7" on July 27, then on the August 4 SpaceX earnings call pushed the window to "next week" — meaning August 10–14 ([OrcaRouter](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/grok-4-6-release-date), 2026). That window is still open, but the silence is notable.

Musk posted about Grok Build V1.0, the coding harness, six times between August 5–8, ending with "Grok Build V1.0 is now released" — on the very day Grok 4.6 was supposed to land. Across those four days, neither Musk nor the company account mentioned Grok 4.6, 4.7, or Grok 5 once, per OrcaRouter's tracking.

What we know about Grok 4.6:

- **Same 1.5T V9 foundation** as [Grok 4.5](/models/grok-4-5) with "significantly improved SFT & RL" — this is a post-training refinement, not a scale-up release
- **Expected pricing**: ~$2/$6 per 1M tokens, matching Grok 4.5 if serving costs hold at the same parameter count
- **Grok 4.7** (2.1T params) follows "a few weeks" after 4.6, and has already drifted from "4 weeks" to "a few weeks" to "3–4 weeks" at each Musk statement
- **LMSYS Arena** plans to evaluate 4.6 the week after launch — the first genuinely third-party read anyone will get

## Why it matters

SpaceXAI has been running an aggressive three-model-in-eight-weeks cadence targeting Anthropic's Opus line ([StartupHub](https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/ai-figures/2026/figure-elon-musk-grok-release-cadence-2026-08-09), 2026). [Grok 4.5](/models/grok-4-5) shipped July 8 and earned a **conditional** verdict from us — competitive pricing at $2/$6 and strong agentic coding performance on SWE-Bench Pro (64.7%) and Terminal-Bench 2.1 (83.3%), but mid-pack among frontier models on broader benchmarks.

Missing the first date in that cadence raises a real question: is this a routine slip, or a sign that the post-training improvements aren't delivering the promised capability jump? Without a model card or independent benchmarks, we have no way to know. Grok 4.6 stays **pending** — a pre-GA model that hasn't proven itself.

The parameter-count confusion that spread through early coverage doesn't help. Musk's July 24 remarks about a "2T model" led outlets to label Grok 4.6 as two-trillion-parameter. His July 27 correction was explicit: Grok 4.6 is the 1.5T model, and Grok 4.7 is the 2.1T model. This matters because it resets expectations — Grok 4.6 is a post-training step on the same foundation, not a bigger brain.

## What changes for you

| If you are... | Your move |
|---|---|
| Building in production today | Use [Grok 4.5](/models/grok-4-5) ($2/$6, ~80 TPS, available now) — it earned its verdict on shipped capability, not a roadmap slide |
| Evaluating 4.6 for a near-term switch | Watch the xAI API console this week (Aug 10–14); prepare a vendor-neutral endpoint so adopting 4.6 is a config change, not a re-integration |
| Waiting for the capability jump | Grok 4.7 at 2.1T is the release to watch — but with a timeline that has already drifted, don't plan sprints around it |
| Following the benchmarks | Arena's Agent leaderboard will publish live-session results within ~a week of 4.6's launch — weight that above any vendor slide |

## FAQ

### When will Grok 4.6 actually release?
Musk's most recent guidance points to the week of August 10–14. The August 7 target passed with no model card, but the company has gone quiet before a launch before. Check the xAI API console this week.

### What's the difference between Grok 4.6 and Grok 4.7?
Grok 4.6 is a 1.5T-parameter post-training refinement — same foundation as Grok 4.5 with improved SFT & RL, targeting better agentic reliability at the same $2/$6 pricing. Grok 4.7 is the 2.1T scale-up, weeks behind, with higher capability and higher serving cost.

Canonical: https://neomanex.com/news/grok-4-6-delayed-august-2026