Despite its latest kerfuffle with the US government over the release of its Mythos and Fable models, Anthropic isn't slowing down.
On Tuesday, the company unveiled Sonnet 5, the latest addition to its Claude model family and the "most agentic" version yet. The company said the model significantly narrows the performance gap between efficient and more powerful models, delivering capabilities on par with larger models at a lower cost.
Sonnet 5 can make plans, use tools like browsers and terminals, and run autonomously in ways that would have previously required more expensive systems, Anthropic said.
- The company noted Sonnet 5 provides "substantial improvement" over its predecessor, Sonnet 4.6, showing an overall lower rate of "undesirable behaviors" and is safer to use in agentic contexts.
- Though it performs close to Opus 4.8, Anthropic's most powerful publicly available model, the company noted that it has a "much lower ability" to perform cybersecurity tasks than its Opus lineup.
- Starting today, Sonnet 5 is available across all plans and is the default model for Free and Pro users. On Claude Code and Claude Platform, the introductory pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, and will be bumped to $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens starting in August.
Early testers include Cursor, Rakuten, Lovable and Factory, with testers broadly impressed with the model's ability to finish complex tasks, check its own outputs and complete agentic work at a good price.
"With Claude Sonnet 5, agents stay on plan, follow our conventions and ship clean multi-step changes, all at an efficient cost," Sualeh Asif, co-founder of Cursor, said in the company's blog post.
Anthropic's cost-friendly model comes at a time when the tokenmaxxing fad is catching up with enterprises. More than ever, companies are considering the untenable costs of AI, with Gartner predicting that AI spending will reach nearly $2.6 trillion this year, up 47% from the prior year. As a result, enterprises are experiencing AI sticker shock. Meanwhile, AI vendors have started to shift their focus to cost efficiency.
Our Deeper View #
Model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic stood to benefit the most from the tokenmaxxing trend. However, with the industry largely recoiling from this mindset after getting hit with massive AI usage bills, model providers may be taking notice that the days of unlimited token gluttony are over. The efficiency-focused design of Sonnet 5 may be a sign that Anthropic wants to keep up with the changing tide. However, efficient and cost-effective AI might not be a bad thing for Anthropic, either. Customers burning through fewer tokens means Anthropic can save on compute, which is vital as demand rises and the shortage worsens. Plus, with Mythos and Fable still caught up in government red tape, the company likely wants to keep its audience hooked, and Sonnet 5 is more economically attractive to large customers.