OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast is coming soon
Tibo Sottiaux replied to developer Ben Davis on October 4th; GPT-6.1 Sol launched on September 29th, and its promised faster mode has no firm release date.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Primary source: X
Why it matters
GPT-6.1 Sol is already available, but OpenAI's promised faster mode remains a separate, unpriced release. Until it ships, developers cannot weigh its latency benefit against the added cost.
OpenAI product and engineering leader Tibo Sottiaux (@thsottiaux) replied "6.1 coming soon" to developer Ben Davis (@davis7) on October 4th, pointing to the faster Ultrafast version of GPT-6.1 Sol. The model is already available; the Ultrafast speed tier is still pending.
The short reply does not name Ultrafast, but the surrounding exchange is about GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast. At the model's September 29th launch, OpenAI said the faster option would arrive "in the coming days." Sottiaux's post confirms that plan but gives no release date and does not announce another model.
GPT-6.1 Sol and Ultrafast availability
OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Sol on September 29th for ChatGPT Work, Codex and API users. The company describes it as delivering performance near its flagship GPT-6 Astra at lower cost for coding, computer use and other professional work. Its standard API rates are $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input priced at $0.10 per million tokens. Those are the model's standard rates; OpenAI has not published a GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast price in the launch announcement.
The launch post said Ultrafast would provide up to eight times faster token generation than standard speed in Codex. That is OpenAI's stated maximum, not a guarantee that every prompt or workflow will run eight times faster. The company has not attached a public date to the mode in either Sottiaux's reply or its original announcement.
Sol's pitch is lower token cost for work that would otherwise use a more capable model. Ultrafast is a separate speed option for users willing to pay more for reduced waiting. OpenAI has not disclosed the Sol Ultrafast rate, so developers cannot compare its price against standard Sol or estimate the cost of trading extra spend for lower latency.
OpenAI's API model documentation lists Sol's standard prices and its 1.05-million-token context window. Its Ultrafast guide describes the API speed tier and shows how to select it for GPT-6 Astra; it does not give a GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast configuration or price. Sottiaux's reply offers a timing hint, not usable deployment guidance.
OpenAI's release timeline
Sottiaux joined OpenAI in 2024 after working at Google and Google DeepMind, where his work included Google Maps and infrastructure used by AI researchers. He later helped build Codex, OpenAI's software-engineering agent, and has become a visible point of contact for developers asking about the company's tools and models. His reply still does not say when users can turn the mode on.
OpenAI set an expectation of "the coming days" on September 29th. Five days later, Sottiaux said it was coming soon, without narrowing the window. Teams can test the model now, but OpenAI has not priced or dated the speed-cost tradeoff it announced for Sol Ultrafast.