Anthropic introduces Claude Opus 4.5 as pace of AI development accelerates

Anthropic has unveiled Claude Opus 4.5, the company’s latest artificial intelligence model designed to excel in coding, computer use and complex enterprise workflows. The launch marks the startup’s third major model release in just two months, reflecting the rapid momentum within the AI sector. The company previously introduced Claude Sonnet 4.5 in late September and Claude Haiku 4.5 in October.

Scott White, product leader for Claude.ai, informed CNBC that the rate of releases and the feedback loop generated from them made him extraordinarily enthusiastic about the product’s trajectory.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and executives, Anthropic recently saw its valuation surge to roughly $350 billion following multi-billion-dollar investments from Microsoft and Nvidia. The firm is best known for its Claude family of AI models, which come in three tiers: Opus as the largest, Sonnet at mid-tier and Haiku as the smallest. The previous flagship model, Claude Opus 4.1, was released in August.

White stated that Claude Opus 4.5 is best suited to professional software developers and knowledge workers such as financial analysts, accountants and consultants. He added that users looking to expand their creative and professional capabilities would also benefit from the upgraded system.

Anthropic said in a blog post that the new model delivers significantly improved performance in day-to-day tasks such as working with spreadsheets, creating slide decks and conducting detailed research. The company further stated that Claude Opus 4.5 leads in agentic coding, outperforming competing systems including Google’s Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAI’s GPT-5.1, based on results from SWE-bench Verified, a benchmark assessing AI coding proficiency.

The startup also reported that Claude Opus 4.5 achieved the highest score ever recorded on a rigorous take-home exam used for prospective performance engineers.

The model will be rolled out globally and will become the default option for Anthropic’s Pro, Max and Enterprise plans. The company is additionally integrating Claude Code into its desktop app and enhancing features across its developer platform.