Anthropic and OpenAI Launch Flagship Models 90 Minutes Apart

Anthropic and OpenAI released their new flagship models within roughly 90 minutes of each other on September 22 — Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol/Luna — both cutting prices by 40–50% compared to their predecessors.

Key points:

• Claude Opus 5.5 is priced at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, roughly 40% below Opus 5. It's available across the Claude API, Claude Code, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry.

• GPT-6 Sol is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. The smaller GPT-6 Luna runs as low as $0.10 / $0.50 per million tokens for high-volume, lower-complexity tasks.

• Independent benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis placed Opus 5.5 at the top of its Intelligence Index, roughly five points ahead of GPT-6 Astra.

• TechCrunch described the near-simultaneous timing as "intense competition" rather than coincidence — both labs appear to be actively watching and responding to each other's release schedules.

For any organization budgeting for AI tools, this is confirmation that frontier-model pricing is now a genuine price war. Budget cycles built around costs from even two months ago are already out of date.

Why It Matters: When two competing labs cut prices by half in the same afternoon, it signals AI pricing is being set by direct, live competition — good news for AI budgets, but a sign that today's rate card may not hold for long.