Claude Opus 4.5 shows Anthropic isn't playing catch-up anymore.

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Curse and Coffee friends,

Today, we explore how Claude Opus 4.5 is the new AI benchmark.

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The take: Anthropic released its flagship model, and the numbers suggest it's pulling ahead in the enterprise race.

What happened: Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.5 on Monday, claiming top benchmark results in coding, computer use, and enterprise workflows. One week after a $15 billion investment from Microsoft and Nvidia, it pushed its valuation to $350 billion.

Why it matters: The company that spun off from OpenAI in 2021 now accounts for 32% of enterprise AI spend, while its former home dropped from 50% to 25% over two years.

What to watch: Microsoft's $30 billion Azure compute commitment from Anthropic, a bet that hedges Redmond's OpenAI exposure while funding its competitor.

Anthropic tested Opus 4.5 on its own take-home exam for performance engineers. The model outscored every human candidate in company history.

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Price compression meets performance gains.

Previous Opus models cost $15/$75 per million tokens. Opus 4.5 costs $5/$25—a 67% cut.

That's market capture.

When your model beats competitors on benchmarks and undercuts them on price, you're consolidating.

The tension is Microsoft's position. Redmond has billions in OpenAI and now billions more in its chief rival.

Satya Nadella calls it "moving beyond zero-sum narratives." Analysts call it insurance.

Both are correct.

We've spent two years asking when Anthropic would catch OpenAI.

The Menlo Ventures data suggests that the question expired around Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

The new question: can OpenAI's consumer dominance (2.5 billion daily ChatGPT prompts) offset enterprise defection? Or does the money follow the code?

Pro: Anthropic bets on safety and coding. Enterprises bought in. Now competition is pushing better models and lower prices for everyone.

Con: A $350B valuation on ~$3B in revenue bets on everything going right. One benchmark stumble or safety incident flips the story overnight.

Our read: The valuation is frothy. The market share shift is real. Enterprise buyers are voting with invoices, not hype cycles.

Menlo Ventures: 2025 Mid-Year LLM Market Update

The primary source showing enterprise LLM spend hit $8.4B (doubled in six months) and Anthropic's rise to market leader. Caveat: Menlo is an Anthropic investor. Read it anyway.

OpenAI's enterprise share: 50% (2023) → 25% (2025). — Menlo Ventures

☕ TechCrunch: Anthropic releases Opus 4.5 with Chrome and Excel integrations — The product roadmap for enterprise lock-in. Browser agents and spreadsheet tools aren't flashy, but they're sticky.

☕ GitHub Blog: Claude Opus 4.5 in public preview for Copilot — Promotional 1x multiplier through December 5. Free trial economics for developer capture.

☕ Simon Willison: Claude Opus 4.5 and why evaluating LLMs is increasingly difficult — A developer's honest take after a weekend with early access. Twenty commits, 2,000 additions, and a note on prompt injection still working 1-in-20 times..

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