Anthropic releases first frontier models since Amodei's call for slowdown as IPO buzz builds

Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic, during an interview at Anthropic's headquarters in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, April 30, 2026.Jason Henry | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAnthropic on Monday released two new artificial intelligence models, Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2, as the company readies for a potentially historic IPO that could take place as soon as next week. Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 are Anthropic's most advanced offerings, and the company said they generate outputs 30% faster than their predecessors. The models also cost 20% less than the 5.1 generation, and will be available for $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens, the company said.The launch marks the first time that Anthropic has released so-called "frontier" models since its CEO, Dario Amodei, called to slow down the pace of AI development in September. Anthropic said the models went through rigorous safety and alignment testing, and that the company developed new evaluations and post-launch monitoring tools ahead of the release. "We called for pacing, not pausing," Dianne Penn, Anthropic's head of product management for research, told CNBC i...