Anthropic Strikes Back

After OpenAI released its reasoning models last fall, Google, Alibaba, High-Flyer Capital Management and others followed with their own. One prominent competitor, Anthropic, has been noticeably absent from the race. 

Now we know one reason: Anthropic is taking a slightly different approach to reasoning. It has developed a hybrid AI model that includes reasoning capabilities, which basically means the model uses more computational resources to calculate answers to hard questions. But the model can also handle simpler tasks quickly, without the extra work, by acting like a traditional large language model. The company plans to release it in the coming weeks, according to a person who’s used it. 

Anthropic surely hopes the model will help the startup reach eye-popping revenue goals—including leapfrogging OpenAI in sales to app developers—which Jon and I scooped on Wednesday.