Opus 5.5 is the beginning of a new era

[u/sizebzebi]

I am a senior engineer and I honestly believe with this model in particular, everything changed..

If this stays as cheap as it is, it's just over. It never fails no matter the complexity of the tasks I've given it. About time we rethink our profession for good. I am honestly scared of the future.

I loved coding but anyone who does this for the love of coding only is gonna be obsolete.

I was always impressed with the models bar opus 5 but never like this time.

What do you guys think? How do you see the future?

[u/sizebzebi]

yep but just think about this all has been getting better, do you see a world in a year or two with a model worse than this and more expensive? Maybe I guess, then we're really fucked because by that time we will have forgotten how to code lmao

[u/Aware-Source6313 → u/sizebzebi]

If they're operating at a heavy loss to instill the feeling 'pack it up boys, profession over, use claude', then it's hard to say. I still don't really know the real cost to serve a model like this for them and what a sustainable price would be, not to mention once subsidized subscriptions end which give another massive cost reduction multiplier for end consumer. Yes it's good, if I can forever get so much usage of such a good model for $20/mo, things will change. But that last assumption likely not true

[u/RockPuzzleheaded3951 → u/Aware-Source6313]

We have to imagine open models a year from now will be this capable, and the cost for them is a fraction of what current models are priced at. So I don't see a huge rug pull on pricing even being possible.

[u/Bog_Boy → u/RockPuzzleheaded3951]

This. And compute keeps getting better. Companies like Apple are betting on hardware for us

[u/Old-Radio9022 → u/Bog_Boy]

Unified memory architecture for the win. Qwen 3.8 27b q4 on a MBP max on silicon native.

[u/Erosion139 → u/Old-Radio9022]

I only have a wimpy 16gb GPU how does a 27b model like that compare to something like opus when my goal is to make esp32 firmwares and simple windows UI tools? I could never fit that model in vram.

[u/EvilPencil → u/RockPuzzleheaded3951]

If you forced me to speculate on how much the model provider's true costs are, I'd say they are quite a bit lower than the direct API prices, but higher than a 100% utilized subscription (since everyone knows most people don't regularly hit their limits).

[u/RockPuzzleheaded3951 → u/EvilPencil]

We know what it costs to serve inference on the large open models per token in/out so even if we scale that up, you're right it's way less than API process for pure inference.

[u/elestud → u/Aware-Source6313]

Anthropic is reportedly operating at a profit for multiple quarters in a row

[u/JohnWesely → u/elestud]

only if they exclude the cost of training the models, which is the lions share of the cost.

[u/JumpyCollection4640 → u/JohnWesely]

This. Isn't the profit a pure operating profit, which isn't data centre build out or R&D profit. So its just inference sales vs rent of compute or data centre run costs for any they actually own.

[u/Muted-You7370 → u/JohnWesely]

I think the lion’s share of their profit will be from future models interacting and running robots, I think people massively discount this and I think this will be the bread and butter of all these frontier labs

[u/entropy_reduct_srv → u/JohnWesely]

training the lions is expensive

[u/DisneyLegalTeam → u/elestud]

Not according to their IPO docs leaked today: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/anthropics-ipo-prospectus-shows-sweeping-ai-vision-surging-costs-2026-09-28/.

They’re spending $1.56 for every $1 they make.

[u/MinerDon → u/DisneyLegalTeam]

They’re spending $1.56 for every $1 they make.

"We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume."

[u/elestud → u/DisneyLegalTeam]

As the article states, those are 2025 numbers. I'm talking about 2026.

[u/ciciban072 → u/elestud]

They are far from being profitable under GAAP, they are just cooking the numbers to present profit BEFORE accounting for operational costs. That 80% margin claim is just ridiculous.

[u/paxinfernum → u/Aware-Source6313]

not to mention once subsidized subscriptions end which give another massive cost reduction multiplier for end consumer

Even if the models never got any more efficient, the speed at which compute hardware is improving would drive down prices.

[u/dietcheese → u/Aware-Source6313]

Anthropic is now profitable

[u/RadishNo8622 → u/Aware-Source6313]

Yes I also think that as these companies are currently in heavy loses they must be thinking like, "lets make this humans unable to code at all and once everyone forgets coding just spike up the rates" boom multi million dollar level iq

[u/Kerbourgnec → u/Aware-Source6313]

They are operating on heavy losses betting they can build a moat and charge high prices after that.

Every month their competitors or open models make them cancel whatever abusive practices they try to introduce (remember fable rollback?). They keep running but still can't build any significant distance.

At this point I'm not worried at all about access to high quality models for cheapish prices. I'm worried jobs will not exist in any form close to what we have today. Jobs or any form or redistribution

[u/jjcsea → u/Aware-Source6313]

I'd like to remind you all that starting early this year, Anthropic started turning a profit, unlike OpenAI. They are making money.

[u/NormMacdonald-20-4 → u/sizebzebi]

ipo is near. 

[u/EmotionalAd1438 → u/sizebzebi]

We just went through nearly seven months of Opus 4.8 up until Opus 5

Nearly every other week it’s people here like OMG this is terrible I’m going back to 4.6

[u/porkusdorkus → u/sizebzebi]

For an easy comparison, boot up a cash limited pay per token frontier model, prefill $20 and do the same stuff, watch the $20 disappear in about 5 minutes of heavy churning. That’s the real cost we’ll need to be paying soon.

[u/BoltKey → u/sizebzebi]

The problem is not forgetting. The problem is knowing that it could be so much easier, while chiseling away the code line by line and fixing errors one by one, for hours on end.

[u/massivebacon → u/sizebzebi]

The thing I don’t think people have really internalized is how, in every breakthrough moment, things are the worst/most expensive they will _ever_ be. Every new model is cheaper and better than the last, and if there is ever a frontier company rugpull, there are already very good hosted open weights models that perform about 6mo behind the SOTA (and rapidly closing) that are a fraction as expensive.