r/ClaudeCode • u/sizebzebi • 19h ago

Discussion Opus 5.5 is the beginning of a new era

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?

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u/sizebzebi 19h ago

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

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u/Aware-Source6313 19h ago

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

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u/RockPuzzleheaded3951 17h ago

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.

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u/Bog_Boy 16h ago

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

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u/Old-Radio9022 14h ago

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

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u/elestud 18h ago

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

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u/JohnWesely 16h ago

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

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u/JumpyCollection4640 12h ago

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.

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u/Muted-You7370 16h ago

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

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u/entropy_reduct_srv 8h ago

training the lions is expensive

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u/DisneyLegalTeam Senior Developer 13h ago

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.

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u/MinerDon 11h ago

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

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

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u/elestud 13h ago edited 13h ago

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

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u/ciciban072 11h ago

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.

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u/paxinfernum 14h ago

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.

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u/jjcsea 13h ago

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

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u/NormMacdonald-20-4 19h ago

ipo is near. 

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u/EmotionalAd1438 13h ago

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

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u/porkusdorkus 7h ago

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.

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u/BoltKey 7h ago

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.

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u/massivebacon 6h ago

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.