Anthropic launches low-cost Haiku 4.5 model to make AI more accessible for businesses

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AI startup Anthropic has unveiled a major update to its smallest model, Haiku, as it seeks to make artificial intelligence more affordable and practical for companies outside Silicon Valley. The new version, Haiku 4.5, costs about one-third as much as Anthropic’s Sonnet 4 and just one-fifteenth the price of its flagship Opus model, while matching or outperforming mid-tier models on tasks like coding and data synthesis.

Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger said the upgrade reflects a growing demand among traditional businesses for cost-effective AI tools that still deliver high performance. “Small models really help because they can be a more economical way of deploying at scale,” Krieger told Reuters, noting that cheaper AI makes it easier for firms to integrate intelligent assistants into systems used by thousands of employees.

Anthropic’s enterprise business now accounts for about 80% of its revenue, with over 300,000 corporate customers using its AI tools internally or within their products. The company’s annual revenue run rate has reached nearly $7 billion, underscoring its rapid ascent in the AI sector.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, the San Francisco-based company has become one of the strongest challengers to OpenAI, backed by a recent valuation of $183 billion.

Anthropic’s smaller models, such as Haiku, aim to balance power and affordability at a time when companies are pushing back against the massive computational costs of training and running large-scale AI systems. The firm says businesses can even combine models — using advanced ones for strategic planning and smaller ones for everyday tasks like information synthesis and web searches.

US cybersecurity firm F5 breach linked to Chinese state-backed hackers, sources say

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A breach at U.S.-based cybersecurity company F5 has been attributed to state-backed hackers from China, according to two people familiar with the investigation. The revelation comes a day after U.S. officials warned that federal networks using F5 products were being targeted by a “nation-state cyber threat actor.”

Sources told Reuters that the hackers had been inside F5’s network for over a year, gaining access to sensitive files, including parts of the company’s source code and details about vulnerabilities that could be exploited to attack government and corporate systems.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said the breach posed an imminent threat to U.S. federal networks and urged immediate patching and updates to F5 devices. Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala warned that the same vulnerabilities could lead to “a catastrophic compromise of critical information systems” across sectors.

F5, which provides security and networking products to both public and private clients, has not commented on the attribution. The company previously confirmed unauthorized access to some internal systems but said its operations were unaffected.

Responding to the allegation, Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said Beijing “opposes and combats hacking activities in accordance with the law” and criticized what it called “false information for political purposes.”

U.S. investigators are continuing to assess the full scope of the breach, which highlights the persistent cybersecurity risks facing key technology providers in both government and industry supply chains.

Apple AI executive Ke Yang departs for Meta amid intensifying talent war

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Apple has lost another key artificial intelligence executive to Meta, as competition for top AI talent across Silicon Valley continues to escalate. Ke Yang, who was recently appointed to lead Apple’s new Answers, Knowledge and Information (AKI) division — a team central to the overhaul of Siri and Apple’s web-based AI search project — is reportedly leaving to join Meta Platforms, according to Bloomberg News.

Yang’s departure comes just weeks after her promotion, which positioned her at the forefront of Apple’s push to develop a ChatGPT-like AI-driven search tool. The project was expected to debut in March as part of Apple’s broader effort to integrate generative AI into its ecosystem.

Neither Apple, Meta, nor Yang have commented publicly on the move. Yang joined Apple in 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, has been aggressively recruiting AI experts from competitors including Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, as major tech firms pour billions into advancing generative AI and large language models. Bloomberg previously reported that other Apple executives, including Ruoming Pang and Robby Walker, have also recently left the company amid the growing AI talent war.

The move underscores the fierce competition among tech giants seeking to gain an edge in the race toward AI-powered search and digital assistants — a space increasingly defined by breakthroughs in conversational models and multimodal intelligence.