Anthropic releases cheaper model in first launch since slowdown calls

Anthropic announced the release of its newest model, Claude Opus 5.5, saying it performs as well or better than Anthropic’s previous most powerful models, Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, in domains including coding, reasoning, business workflows, and safety. At the same time, it will cost 40% less to run, according to the announcement on Tuesday.

The release is the first from Anthropic since its chief executive, Dario Amodei, led an industry-wide call earlier this month to slow the development of frontier AI to prioritize safety. Anthropic says Opus 5.5 performed the best of any of its recent models on an automated suite of evaluations testing for malicious or overeager actions and deceptiveness.

The cheaper option comes as Anthropic faces stiff competition and rising costs weigh increasingly heavily on their enterprise customers. OpenAI, facing similar pressures, released cheaper ChatGPT-6 models on Tuesday at half the price of their ChatGPT-5.6 counterparts.