TLDR
- Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.6, an AI model with improved coding skills and financial analysis capabilities
- FactSet Research Systems stock dropped 9.1% following the announcement on Thursday
- S&P Global fell 4.2% and Moody’s declined 3.3% after the model release
- The new model can conduct research, create documents, and run financial analyses
- Claude Opus 4.6 now ranks first on the Finance Agent benchmark for financial analyst tasks
Anthropic released its latest AI model Claude Opus 4.6 on Thursday, causing sharp declines in financial data and research company stocks. The announcement spooked investors worried about potential disruption to traditional financial services.
FactSet Research Systems shares fell 9.1% after the model launch. Credit-rating agencies S&P Global and Moody’s dropped 4.2% and 3.3% respectively. Nasdaq, which operates both as a data provider and stock exchange, declined 3.7%.
The new model improves on the coding capabilities of its predecessor, Claude Opus 4.5. Anthropic said in a blog post that the model can conduct research and create documents and files. The company released the announcement Thursday afternoon.
Claude Opus 4.6 represents Anthropic’s first major model launch of 2026. The company released three other models in late 2025. These included Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and Claude Haiku 4.5.
Enterprise customers make up roughly 80% of Anthropic’s business. CEO Dario Amodei shared this figure with CNBC last month. The company’s models have gained particular popularity with business users.
Enhanced Coding and Financial Capabilities
The new model excels at planning, code review, and debugging within large codebases. It can pull relevant information from large document sets. The system also performs financial analyses and research tasks.
Claude Opus 4.6 achieved the top position on the Finance Agent benchmark. This benchmark measures how well AI agents handle core financial analyst tasks. The ranking indicates the model’s strength in finance-related work.
“If I think about the last year, Claude went from a model that you can sort of talk to to accomplish a very small task or get an answer, to something that you can actually hand real work to,” said Scott White, Anthropic’s head of product for enterprise.
Broader Software Market Impact
Anthropic’s AI tools have started to concern software investors. The company’s Claude Code coding tool and Claude Cowork productivity tool have raised disruption fears. The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund has fallen more than 20% year to date.
White described the shift in how people work with AI. “Everybody has seen this transformation happen with software engineering in the last year and a half, where vibe coding started to exist as a concept,” he told CNBC. “I think that we are now transitioning almost into vibe working.”
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and executives. The company develops a family of AI models called Claude. The largest model in the family carries the Opus name, while midsize models are called Sonnet and the smallest are Haiku.
The model is available through multiple channels. Users can access Claude Opus 4.6 at claude.ai, through the company’s API, and across major cloud platforms.
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