OpenAI and Anthropic Cut AI Model Prices as Safety Debate Continues

OpenAI and Anthropic each announced new, lower-cost artificial intelligence models on Tuesday, as both companies face competition from cheaper open-weight offerings.

OpenAI added tiers to its GPT-6 family, saying the new options cut API prices by 50% compared with GPT-5.6 promotional pricing. One tier targets complex workloads such as coding, while the other is aimed at high-volume tasks like extracting information or summarizing documents.

Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5, describing it as more token-efficient and about 40% cheaper to run than Opus 5. A product management lead said the company continues working on making responses use fewer tokens depending on effort settings.

The releases are the first since Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for an industry-wide slowdown on advanced AI development amid heated debate over model safety. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also joined that call.

Both labs are under pressure from companies offering cheaper open-weight models, including Chinese firms Alibaba, Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, and are working to satisfy customers seeking to rein in AI spending.

Source: CNBC