august 2026: 8 frontier models dropping this month – grok, gemini, gpt astra, and more

Nick Trenkler 6 Aug 2026 1 min read

Comic-style figure hammering a glowing "Model #8" block on a conveyor belt in a neon-lit factory

we'll have 8 models released by the end of august. 3 of them are in the next 2 weeks. the closest is tomorrow

dated:

• aug 7 – grok 4.6 (@xai)
• aug 11 – gemini 3.5 pro (@Google)
• aug 14 – gpt astra (@OpenAI)

no date, rumored this month:

• grok 4.7 (@xai) – the 2.1t model, "a few weeks" after 4.6
• fable 5.1 (@AnthropicAI)
• glm 5.5 (@Zai_org)
• kimi k3.1 (@Kimi_Moonshot)
• composer 3 (@cursor_ai) – 1.5t, cursor's first full pretrain

Calendar view of August 7–16 highlighting Grok 4.6 on Aug 7, Gemini 3.5 Pro on Aug 11, and GPT Astra on Aug 14

glm 5.3 vs kimi k3 – four hogwarts locations in three.js

the setup: streamed straight off @openrouter, no agent loop, no tools, no filesystem – one prompt in, one html file out. the system prompt is a three.js skill, 32,014

21 Aug 2026 1 min read

Illustrated man in jacket with Chinese flag patches holds cash stack, hands $6 receipt to server rack in neon-lit data center

the performance gap between us and chinese models is at a record-low 6% per bloomberg

@rachelmetz, ai reporter at @technology, broke down the cost math: the industry is quietly moving from cost per token to cost per task. not how cheap the model is per

21 Aug 2026 1 min read