AI slowdown? OpenAI and Anthropic launch cheaper AI models days after urging caution on frontier AI

OpenAI and Anthropic have launched cheaper AI models as businesses seek more cost-effective tools and competition intensifies. OpenAI introduced GPT-6 Sol and Luna, while Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 5.5 with lower operating costs.

OpenAI and Anthropic on Tuesday launched lower-cost AI models, expanding their model lineups as businesses increasingly seek affordable AI tools. OpenAI launched GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, while Anthropic introduced Claude Opus 5.5. According to the companies, the new models are designed primarily for everyday business tasks rather than the most advanced frontier AI applications.

The launches came within hours of each other and follow recent calls by both companies for a more measured approach, or “pacing,” to frontier AI development. The timing highlights a growing distinction between frontier AI research and commercial AI offerings, with competition increasingly centred on cost, efficiency and enterprise adoption rather than capability alone.

GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna and Claude Opus 5.5 target lower-cost AI use cases

In a blog post, OpenAI said that GPT-6 Sol is designed for more complex tasks, including coding, while GPT-6 Luna is well-suited for high-volume workloads such as information extraction and document summarization.

The company said API pricing for the two models is 50% cheaper than the promotional rates of the GPT-5.6 models. According to OpenAI, the reductions stem from optimizations in caching and inference.

According to Anthropic, Claude Opus 5.5 is the first model in its new 5.5 family. The company said the model delivers performance comparable to Claude Fable 5.1 on most tasks while costing 40% less to operate than Opus 5.1.

Anthropic priced the model at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens and said Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 would follow in the coming weeks.

Pragya Singha Roy