The benchmark era is giving way to the budget meeting

Several of today’s strongest stories point in the same direction: AI products are being judged less by raw intelligence and more by speed, cost and packaging. Writer introduced a new AI model and upgraded harness to contain token costs, OpenAI introduced Ultrafast for GPT-5.6 Sol at 14x the speed, IBM partnered with OpenAI, and Microsoft killed off unsuccessful AI features while merging Copilot…