AI developer Anthropic has released Claude Opus 5.5, which is a new model designed to handle business work at a much lower price than its most powerful Fable 5.1 model. Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. For reference, Fable 5.1 costs $10 and $50, respectively. Anthropic says that Opus 5.5 performs similarly to Fable 5.1 on most work while also costing less than the previous Opus 5. The launch comes as Anthropic prepares for an expected IPO later this fall.

This matters because businesses do not always need the most powerful model that is available. Instead, many customers want a model that can handle professional tasks well without making every request expensive.

Furthermore, Anthropic says that Opus 5.5 produces answers faster than Opus 5 and that it improved how the model handles professional knowledge work.

Anthropic Is Adding More Safety Checks

The release is also important because it is Anthropic's first major new model since CEO Dario Amodei called for the AI industry to slow down the pace at which it develops more powerful systems. Interestingly, Anthropic had Opus 5.5 tested by outside groups before its release. Those evaluators included METR and Frontier Design. Moreover, the company added safeguards that are similar to those used with Fable 5.1.

Those protections are designed to limit higher-risk cybersecurity and biology uses. As a result, Anthropic says that Opus 5.5 was 85% less likely than earlier models to attempt to get around containment controls during its internal safety tests.

In addition, Anthropic plans to release Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Haiku 5.5 in the coming weeks.

The timing also puts more attention on Anthropic's expected stock market debut. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the company shifted its planned IPO to November, which could give it more time to show investors its third-quarter financial results.

Is AMZN Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?

Since Anthropic is not publicly listed on stock exchanges, regular investors cannot buy its shares directly. Investors who want to trade public AI companies can look at the company's largest outside investor, tech giant Amazon (AMZN). Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 39 Buys and two Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average AMZN price target of $331.16 per share implies 30% upside potential. (See AMZN Stock Forecast).