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

> Source: <https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/13/openai-introduces-ultrafast-a-new-mode-that-makes-gpt-5-6-sol-work-at-14x-the-speed/>
> Published: 2026-08-13 19:22:40+00:00

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](https://openai.com/index/previewing-ultrafast/), which it says is designed to seriously accelerate the pace at which its latest and most powerful model, [GPT 5.6 Sol](https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/09/openai-launches-its-new-family-of-models-with-gpt-5-6/), 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 a blog post](https://openai.com/index/previewing-ultrafast/) 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](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/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.”
