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.