(Bloomberg) — Anthropic PBC is releasing a new artificial intelligence model that’s meant to field a wide range of business tasks at a lower cost, part of the startup’s bid to keep ahead of rivals while it prepares for a highly anticipated Wall Street debut.
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The company on Tuesday unveiled Claude Opus 5.5, a model it says performs similarly to Anthropic’s more capable Fable 5.1 offering on most work while costing significantly less to use than the prior Opus 5 option. Anthropic said the new model also generates output faster than Opus 5 and has been found to write more clearly.
The AI developer plans to expand its 5.5 family of models with new versions of Claude Sonnet and Haiku in the coming weeks.
Anthropic is working to develop more advanced and cost-efficient AI software as it competes with OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and a long list of Chinese firms for customers. The Claude maker is expected to hold its initial public offering as soon as this fall, while rival OpenAI waits until next year.
Opus 5.5 also marks the first new model since Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei called on the industry to support slowing the pace of AI development. He said his firm would implement new safety steps, including bringing on third-party evaluators. Those moves followed growing warnings inside and outside Silicon Valley about the potential catastrophic risks from AI.
Anthropic said Opus 5.5 was tested by external firms, including METR and Frontier Design, before its release. The company is also implementing safeguards similar to its more powerful Fable model that are meant to limit riskier cybersecurity and biology uses.
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