TechCrunch — AI · · 2 min read

OpenAI introduces ‘Ultrafast,’ a new mode that makes GPT-5.6 Sol work at 14x the speed

Mirrored from TechCrunch — AI for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

In Brief

Posted:

12:22 PM PDT · August 13, 2026
This illustration picture shows the AI (Artificial Intelligence) smartphone app ChatGPT surrounded by other AI App in Vaasa, on June 6, 2023.
Image Credits:Olivier Morin/AFP / Getty Images

OpenAI introduces ‘Ultrafast,’ a new mode that makes GPT-5.6 Sol work at 14x the speed

If you’ve ever found yourself wishing that ChatGPT was a little bit quicker on the uptake, OpenAI seems to be answering your prayers.

The AI lab has rolled out a new mode called Ultrafast, which it says is designed to seriously accelerate the pace at which its latest and most powerful model, GPT-5.6 Sol, accomplishes its work.

The company says that Ultrafast can work at 14x the speed of standard processing, delivering up to 750 output tokens — such tokens represent the distinct pieces of text generated by an LLM when it interacts with a human — per second.

“Until now, getting real-time speed typically meant choosing a smaller or more specialized model,” the company said in the blog post on Thursday. “Ultrafast points to progress in a new direction: more useful work per second.”

OpenAI’s competitors, like Anthropic, have similarly launched accelerated versions of their models. Claude has fast mode, although it doesn’t deliver the kind of speed that OpenAI is offering here.

OpenAI suggests that this high-octane version of GPT-5.6 Sol can be deployed across a number of different corporate workflows, most notably incident response, customer service and support, financial market analysis, and e-commerce, among other relevant areas.

Ultrafast, which is currently being released in preview, is being powered by OpenAI’s partnership with chipmaker Cerebras. Currently, that preview is only being made available to a small group of customers, although OpenAI says that it will expand access to the feature as “capacity grows.”

Event Logo
October 13 – 15
San Francisco


Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you.

Save up to $300 today!

Newsletters

Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news

Related

  • Some Claude users are mad that Anthropic’s new watermarks will catch them using it at their jobs, classes

    22 hours ago
  • Latest in AI

  • Anthropic set AI agents loose on the same task. They started a turf war.

    2 hours ago
  • Discussion (0)

    Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.

    Sign in →

    No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.

    More from TechCrunch — AI