Anthropic has unveiled a new artificial intelligence model designed to handle a broad range of business tasks at a lower cost, as the company seeks to strengthen its position against rivals ahead of a potential initial public offering.

The company on Tuesday introduced Claude Opus 5.5, which it said delivers performance comparable to its more capable Fable 5.1 model across most tasks while costing significantly less than the previous Opus 5 model.

Anthropic said Opus 5.5 also generates responses faster than its predecessor and produces clearer written output.

The AI company plans to expand the 5.5 model family in the coming weeks with new versions of Claude Sonnet and Haiku.

Anthropic is developing more capable and cost-efficient AI models as it competes with OpenAI, Google and Chinese AI companies for enterprise customers.

The Claude maker is also reportedly preparing for a potential IPO as early as this autumn, while OpenAI is expected to pursue a public listing next year.

Opus 5.5 is the first major model release since Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the AI industry to slow the pace of development and adopt stronger safety measures.

Amodei said Anthropic would introduce additional safeguards, including the use of third-party evaluators, amid growing concerns over the potential risks associated with increasingly powerful AI systems.