Anthropic Launches Opus 4.6 in Another hit to the Software Market

Manuel

Summary:

Based on the company's benchmarks, Opus 4.6 tops a number of major benchmarks, beating out the likes of OpenAI's GPT-5.2 and Google's Gemini 3 Pro.

AI company Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) is expanding on its recent software launches, debuting its Opus 4.6 model on Thursday, calling it the company's "most capable model for all enterprise and knowledge work."

The announcement comes just days after Anthropic revealed a series of enterprise-focused plugins for the company's Claude Cowork, designed for a variety of tasks ranging from productivity to legal, sales, and marketing work.

That news sent shares of already vulnerable software companies plunging further south after big losses in 2025 amid fears that AI platforms like Claude Cowork will replace software-as-a-service offerings from the likes of Salesforce (CRM) and SAP (SAP) in the coming years.

Anthropic's release also comes just hours after OpenAI announced its new Frontier platform, which the company said is designed to allow customers to deploy AI agents that will interact with their existing software systems and perform tasks for and with workers.

Salesforce stock is off 25% since the start of the year, while SAP shares have fallen 18%. Intuit (INTU) and Thomson Reuters (TRI) stock prices have plummeted 32% and 30%, respectively, over the same period.

Anthropic has made enterprise work and coding two of its key business drivers, helping the company better differentiate itself from chief rival OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), with Cowork and its associated plugins pushing the AI firm into closer competition with software companies.

Opus 4.6, the company said, "is a frontier model that raises the bar for knowledge work, with the ability to take on entire complex tasks."

Based on the company's benchmarks, Opus 4.6 tops a number of major benchmarks, beating out the likes of OpenAI's GPT-5.2 and Google's Gemini 3 Pro.

According to a release, Opus 4.6 can produce results closer to "production-ready quality" on its first attempt, which Anthropic said will mean fewer back-and-forth iterative changes to things like documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

For AI agents, Anthropic claims Opus 4.6 can work across dozens of tools as part of a single task and address errors as it goes. It can also analyze financial data, including regulatory filings, market reports, and internal data.

As for coding, Opus 4.6 can reportedly complete development projects in hours that would normally take days.

Claude is also coming to Microsoft's PowerPoint as part of a research preview for Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers, allowing users to create presentations using prompts. Anthropic can already integrate with Microsoft apps like SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and Teams.

To help further boost its visibility, Anthropic is set to run an ad during the Super Bowl on Sunday that, ironically, pokes fun at OpenAI for its decision to lean on selling ads to generate additional revenue.

In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that the ad was deceptive, adding that his company has more users in Texas alone than all of Anthropic's users.

Source: Yahoo Finance

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