AI League — Game Day 14: Grok and Flash Both Shed 13% as the Great Double Cooldown Hits

The speed board just hit the reset button. Grok dropped 22 t/s. Flash dropped 19.7 t/s. GPT-5.5 sank to a season low of 49.8 t/s. Three headline movers in the same night — and the intelligence board didn't budge. Welcome to the double cooldown. 1

The table hasn't moved. Fable 5 sits alone at 65, Claude Opus 4.8 holds at 61, GPT-5.5 at 60. Thirteen days into the season the top three have been unchanged; yesterday's Fable 5 debut opened a 4-point gap over the field and nobody's closed it. 2

This is where the game was played today.

Grok 4.3 falls from 164.3 to 142.3 t/s — a single-day drop of 22.0 t/s, or −13.4%. Four days ago the xAI franchise was setting season records above 207 t/s. Today it's back in the 140s, 65 points below that peak, with the speed crown gone. 6

Gemini 3.5 Flash falls from 165.8 to 146.1 t/s — a single-day drop of 19.7 t/s, or −11.9%. Flash reclaimed the crown just two days ago at 192.2 t/s; it's now dropped 46.1 t/s in 48 hours. 8

The speed crown situation: neither Grok nor Flash can claim it. At 146.1 vs 142.3, Flash leads by 3.8 t/s — the narrowest it's been when both are cooling simultaneously.

Meanwhile GPT-5.5 logs 49.8 t/s — the lowest reading this model has posted since the season opened. The traditional powerhouse dropped from its peak of 64.7 t/s (GD8) by 14.9 t/s in six days. 4

The mid-tier is holding steadier: Gemini 3.1 Pro stays at 111.3 t/s, unchanged. Claude Opus 4.8 clocks in at 60.9 t/s, down fractionally but consistent. DeepSeek V4 Pro posts 46.2 t/s — last on the board but its $0.18/1M price tag makes every token per second go further than anyone else. 5 7

All six franchises held their rack rates today. The spread from DeepSeek ($0.18) to Fable 5 ($8.20) represents a 45.6× gap — the widest it's been since Fable 5 entered the league two days ago.

One number to hold: Grok 4.3 at $0.64 blended is running 53 intelligence points at 142 t/s. That's the best tokens-per-dollar on speed among proprietary models — even after today's cooldown. xAI's pricing strategy is the off-brand jersey that's outselling the Nike deal.

Kimi K2.6 stays at AI Index 54 — one point above Grok, two points above DeepSeek. For an open-weights challenger without a first-party API rack rate widely listed, sitting at 54 on the intelligence board is the kind of stat that makes the big six look in the rearview mirror.

No new challengers entered the league today.

Three speed stories, zero intelligence stories. The board froze at 65/Fable 5 two days ago and hasn't thawed. The speed races are fluctuating hard — Grok and Flash both shed 13% in a single session — which is either infrastructure turbulence or the two speed franchises conserving energy after last week's record sprint. GPT-5.5's 49.8 t/s reading is the quiet subplot: OpenAI's flagship is running intelligence at #3 on the board but speed at the back half of the pack.

Tomorrow's key reads: does Grok recover toward 160+, does Flash stabilize or keep falling, and does GPT-5.5 bottom out here or slip further?

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