Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei speaks at the Inbound 2025 Powered by HubSpot artificial intelligence panel at Moscone Center in San Francisco on September 4, 2025.
Chance Ye | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Anthropic unveiled Claude Sonnet 4.6 on Tuesday, its second major artificial intelligence model launch in less than two weeks.
According to the company, Claude Sonnet 4.6 excels at using computers, coding, designing, completing knowledge work tasks, and processing large amounts of data.
For Anthropic’s free and paid Pro users, this model serves as the default within the Claude chatbot and Claude Cowork productivity tools.
Anthropic uses OpenAI and googleAnd the release of Claude Sonnet 4.6 serves as the latest example of the breakneck pace of development needed to keep up in the AI industry.
Anthropic launched another model just 12 days ago, the Claude Opus 4.6.
“Performance that previously required reaching out to Opus-class models is now available in Sonet 4.6, including for real-world, economically valuable office tasks,” Anthropic said in a blog post Tuesday.
Anthropic’s recent progress has also accelerated the steep decline in software stocks in recent months. The iShares Expanded Technology Software Sector ETF (IGV) has fallen more than 20% year-to-date as investors become increasingly concerned about the potential for AI to disrupt these businesses.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 likely won’t address these concerns, as Anthropic says the model will bring “significantly improved coding skills” to more users. According to Anthropic, this model is more consistent with coding and makes people better at following coding instructions.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI researchers and executives and is best known for developing a family of AI models called Claude.
The company assigns new numbers to models with each generation, but typically the largest model in the family is called the Opus, the mid-sized model is called the Sonnet, and the smallest model is called the Haiku.
Anthropic announced Thursday that it closed a $30 billion funding round at a post-money valuation of $380 billion, more than double its value in September.
As previously reported by CNBC, OpenAI is also in funding talks with investors for a round that could close at around $100 billion.
WATCH: The once-quiet rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic is heating up
