Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5, offering high pe…
Anthropic on Friday released Claude Opus 5, a new artificial intelligence model that the company says approaches the performance of its most powerful system at half the price. The San Francisco-based startup, a chief rival to OpenAI, said the model tops industry benchmarks for coding and knowledge work while consuming fewer computing resources than earlier versions. The claim addressed rising concerns among business customers who have balked at the expense of running advanced AI systems.
Claude competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, with customers paying based on the amount of work performed, measured in units called tokens. Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, half the price of Fable 5, Anthropic’s most expensive publicly available offering. The company said the new model performs close to Fable 5 across many tasks despite the lower cost.
Cost has become a major issue after Anthropic and its rival OpenAI both filed for stock market listings in June. Wall Street is scrutinising their business performance more closely than ever ahead of their market debuts. The release of Opus 5 is a strategic move by Anthropic to address the growing demand for affordable AI solutions while maintaining high performance.
On cybersecurity, Anthropic said it deliberately avoided training Opus 5 on cyber tasks, and that the model remains behind Mythos 5 its most capable and most tightly restricted system, available only to select partners on both offensive cyber work and biological research capabilities that could be misused. Mythos is Anthropic’s most advanced series of AI models, and its strength at finding weaknesses in computer systems has caused controversy, pushing the company to build tight guardrails around them.
The company said Opus 5 finds software flaws about as well as Mythos 5 but lags far behind in turning those flaws into something that could be weaponised into an attack. Citing the reduced risk, Anthropic said its automated safety filters will intervene roughly 85% less often on Opus 5 than on Fable 5, the Mythos-class model it released last month. Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were briefly pulled from public access in June after the US Commerce Department imposed export controls, which were lifted at the end of that month.
The release of Claude Opus 5 marks a significant milestone for Anthropic as it seeks to compete in the rapidly evolving AI market. By offering a high-performance model at a lower cost, the company aims to attract a broader range of customers, including businesses and developers who may have been priced out of the market. The focus on affordability and performance reflects the growing demand for AI solutions that can deliver results without breaking the bank. As the AI industry continues to evolve, the competition between Anthropic, OpenAI, and other players is expected to intensify, with companies racing to develop models that are both powerful and cost-effective. Anthropic’s strategic approach to balancing performance, cost, and safety positions it well in the competitive landscape, and the company is likely to continue innovating to meet the needs of its customers. The launch of Opus 5 is a testament to Anthropic’s commitment to advancing AI technology while addressing the practical concerns of businesses and developers. The AI industry will be watching closely to see how the market responds to this new offering and how it shapes the future of AI development and deployment.