Half-price Terra, open Mistral weights, a NY chatbot law
OpenAI halves its mid-tier price, Google keeps Carbon with cyber defenders, Mistral opens a 1-trillion-parameter model, and New York sets chatbot limits for minors.
OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Terra costs $1 and $5 per million tokens, half its predecessor's price
OpenAI says the list price is at least 50% below GPT-6.1 Sol's and GPT-5.6 Terra's, so a high-volume job on either could cost much less. The task-level numbers matter more. OpenAI's own test has Terra at $1.01 per task against $3.58 for GPT-5.6 Terra. Those figures are OpenAI-reported, at maximum effort, and Opus 5.5 still scored higher on that test at $8.82. Token price, score and cost per task are three different measures, and review time can erase a saving. Put one recurring job through Terra and compare finished work, including the minutes a person spends checking it.
At a glance
- OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Terra October 26 at $1 in and $5 out per million tokens, replacing GPT-5.6 Terra.
- Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon October 28 for a subset of cyber defenders only, at an introductory $2 in and $10 out.
- Mistral released Large 4 open weights October 29 under a modified MIT license; its API costs $0.70 in and $2.10 out.
- New York enacted S9051-B on October 28; its limits on AI chatbot features for minors take effect January 1, 2027.
Worth deciding this week
- Run one recurring task on GPT-6.1 Terra and compare cost per finished task.
- Plan any Gemini 4 budget at $4 and $20 per million tokens, not the introductory rates.
- Read Mistral's license terms before building a hosted product on the Large 4 weights.
- List every chat assistant New York consumers can reach and mark whether it can answer off-topic.