US-based artificial intelligence firm Anthropic on Thursday unveiled Claude Opus 4.6, its latest high-performance AI model, stepping up competition with industry heavyweight OpenAI as the global race to dominate generative AI intensifies.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has quickly emerged as a serious challenger in the AI ecosystem. Its recent string of product launches has drawn strong interest from developers and enterprises, while also fuelling investor concerns about the long-term impact of AI on traditional software companies. Those concerns were reflected earlier this week in a selloff across several listed software stocks in the US.

Anthropic positions itself differently from OpenAI, which has focused heavily on consumer adoption through its chatbot ChatGPT. Instead, Anthropic has concentrated on enterprise users and professional developers, highlighting reliability, safety and predictable outputs as core strengths of its models.

Enterprise-Focused Capabilities And Use Cases

According to the company, Claude Opus 4.6 represents a significant advance in handling complex workplace tasks. Anthropic said the model is designed to process and synthesise large volumes of information, including financial statements, regulatory filings and market data, making it suitable for tasks such as financial modelling and compliance-heavy analysis.

The model is also pitched as a tool for producing high-quality documents and presentations that require minimal human editing. Anthropic said outputs generated by Claude Opus 4.6 are closer to “production-ready” quality on the first attempt, reducing the need for repeated prompting and revisions that are common with many current AI systems.

This focus on first-pass accuracy is aimed at businesses seeking efficiency gains without compromising on consistency. For regulated sectors such as finance, legal services and healthcare, predictability and traceability of outputs remain critical factors in AI adoption.

Rapid Growth Overshadowed By High Costs

The launch of Claude Opus 4.6 comes at the end of a busy period for Anthropic, which has introduced more than 30 product updates in recent months. One of its notable successes has been Claude Code, a coding-focused AI tool that crossed $1 billion in revenue within six months of its public launch in November.

Despite the strong topline growth, Anthropic, like OpenAI, continues to face heavy expenditure on computing infrastructure. Training and operating advanced AI models requires vast processing power, keeping profitability out of reach for now. Industry observers note that this cost pressure is a shared challenge across the AI sector.

OpenAI, meanwhile, is also pushing deeper into enterprise offerings. On Thursday, it announced a new business-focused platform for AI agents called Frontier, underscoring how closely matched the two rivals have become in terms of ambition and product cadence.

Business Models, Ads And A Public Face-Off

Beyond technology, the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI has extended into business philosophy and public messaging. Anthropic has publicly committed to keeping its Claude chatbot free from advertising, arguing that ads are incompatible with the personal nature of user interactions with AI systems.

This contrasts with OpenAI’s recent move to introduce advertising for non-paying ChatGPT users, a decision that has attracted criticism from some quarters. Anthropic relies primarily on enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions for revenue, a distinction it is now highlighting through its first Super Bowl advertising campaign.

The campaign drew a sharp response from OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who criticised Anthropic’s positioning in a social media post. According to US media reports, Anthropic is planning a staff tender offer valuing the company at around $350 billion, while OpenAI is reportedly targeting a valuation of $800 billion in its next funding round. Both companies are widely expected to explore public listings in the coming years, setting the stage for a prolonged and high-stakes AI showdown.

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