Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.6; here's what's new
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Anthropic is showing no signs of slowing its AI push. Its recent launch of workplace tool Claude Cowork rattled global markets, triggering an estimated $285 billion wipeout in listed US tech companies and sending tremors through Indian IT stocks. Yet the company has moved ahead with the launch of Claude Opus 4.6.
In its official blog announcing the release, the company described the model as “our most capable model to date.”
Anthropic said the new model is built to deliver “new levels of reliability and precision to coding, agents, and enterprise workflows.” The company claims the upgrade improves how the system handles complex tasks such as software development, research work and large business projects. "Claude Opus 4.6 gets much closer to production-ready quality on the first try than what we've seen with any model," while continuing to say that deliverables will require "less back-and-forth" to finalise.
According to the blog, Claude Opus 4.6 is better at planning and executing multi-step tasks. Anthropic said the model “improves coding skills, plans more carefully, sustains agentic tasks for longer, and operates more reliably in larger codebases.” The company added that the model is designed to complete long workflows with fewer corrections from users.
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A major improvement highlighted by Anthropic is the model’s ability to process significantly larger volumes of information. The company said Claude Opus 4.6 supports a beta context window of up to one million tokens, allowing it to read, analyse and work across large documents, datasets and detailed software projects without losing context.
Anthropic also said the model performs better in professional settings such as financial analysis, document creation, spreadsheets and presentations. The company noted that the system is designed to produce higher-quality results in the first attempt, reducing the need for repeated prompts or manual edits.
Claude vs OpenAI's ChatGPT
The competitive approaches of the two companies also differ. While OpenAI has largely focused on building AI tools aimed directly at end users and enterprises across multiple functions, Anthropic has positioned its models more toward developers and coding-heavy workflows. Its recent launches continue to emphasise software development, automation and structured technical tasks.