Anthropic launches new Claude model as AI fears rattle markets

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Anthropic has launched a powerful new AI model aimed at businesses, pressing its advantage in enterprise software at a time when the start-up’s technology has rattled markets.

The San Francisco-based group on Thursday unveiled Claude Opus 4.6, described by the company as its “most capable” model for businesses and knowledge work.

“We are the leader in the enterprise [market] and we want to be the ones building real-life agents for the enterprise,” Anthropic’s head of digital native businesses Guillaume Princen told the FT.  

The model’s launch comes after Anthropic’s AI tools fuelled a sell-off this week on fears they are upending traditional software development, potentially disrupting sectors from publishing and advertising to law.

Anthropic said that Opus 4.6 is the top-performing model for finding information, analysing it and generating outputs that require less tweaking.

It is also able to take on more complex tasks, process significantly more data at once and detect bugs in computer software. 

Opus 4.6 outperformed OpenAI’s most powerful model GPT-5.2 in an independent benchmark measuring performance on knowledge-work tasks in finance, legal and other sectors.

Unlike rivals OpenAI and Google, which are also trying to win over consumers, Anthropic has focused on enterprise customers.

In 2025, Anthropic launched Claude Code, which uses large language models to generate lines of computer code. It quickly became the gold standard for AI-generated coding and reached $1bn in revenue in only six months. 

In January, the start-up released Cowork, an AI coding tool for enterprises that requires no coding abilities. It went further last Friday with the launch of freely available “open source” plug-ins for Cowork that could be used across sectors such as law, sales and customer service.

Anthropic’s push comes as rival AI groups, such as OpenAI, are seeking to capture a bigger share of the enterprise market. OpenAI on Thursday launched its own platform that allows businesses to build, deploy and manage AI agents. 

AI labs have also stepped up hiring of so-called “forward deployed engineers”, specialists who are embedded within businesses to help them customise their AI models.

Michael Truell, co-founder and chief executive of AI coding company Cursor, one of Anthropic’s biggest customers, said Opus 4.6 stands out on “harder problems”. “Stronger tenacity, better code review and it stays on long-horizon tasks where others drop off,” he added.

Another new capability of Opus 4.6 is that it can also work directly inside PowerPoint to build and edit slides and can pull together regulatory filings, market reports and internal data to produce financial analysis. 

In a sign of surging investor enthusiasm for the start-up, Anthropic is in talks to raise about $20bn from venture capitalists and other investors. This is double the amount it had targeted and would value the company at $350bn.