In 2026, Anthropic released its new AI model Opus 5. The company describes it as its most powerful model to date for general knowledge work. Potential applications include analysing large collections of documents, creating and editing complex spreadsheets, and producing well-structured presentations. The new model is also intended to be particularly well suited to scientific research and is said to offer improvements over its predecessor in multi-step analysis, or so-called deep reasoning.
Opus 5 processes all requests using Thinking mode. For each task, the model decides when and how extensively to reason. An effort parameter allows users to control the depth of reasoning by choosing between different effort levels, enabling them to balance cost and performance according to their needs.
By Maria Kleiner
Source: Fast Company, 24 July 2026, by Mark Sullivan