Anthropic leapfrogs OpenAI as the most valuable AI startup — and drops a new model (www.businessinsider.com)

Anthropic has announced a significant milestone by raising $65 billion, bringing its valuation to an impressive $965 billion and making it the most valuable AI startup, surpassing OpenAI. Concurrently, the company unveiled Claude Opus 4.8, a new version of its large language model that boasts improvements in coding, reasoning, and general knowledge tasks. This upgrade comes as both Anthropic and OpenAI intensify their competition to dominate the AI landscape, with both companies gearing up to go public and seeking to expand their customer base for coding tools. The introduction of Opus 4.8 features a novel "effort control" mechanism, allowing users to manage the model's computing power for specific tasks more effectively, thereby optimizing costs. Notably, the new fast mode is priced at three times lower than earlier versions, catering to enterprises mindful of their AI expenditures. Although Opus 4.8 is a step forward, Anthropic clarified that it is not the highly anticipated Mythos model, which is under development with a focus on cybersecurity capabilities. Anthropic continues to enhance its offerings while actively working on safeguards for Mythos, indicating that the race for advanced AI functionality is far from over.