💸 Claude's new budget model matches OpenAI's price, almost
A new Claude model ties OpenAI's cheapest tier on price, but a bigger token count eats into the saving.
Three-minute read. In today’s issue: a new budget Claude model that matches OpenAI on price, ChatGPT’s interactive answers rolling out to everyone, a motion-graphics reel built entirely with Opus 5.5, and a pelican still learning to ride a bicycle.
COSTS
Claude’s new cheap model matches OpenAI’s price, but a bigger token count eats into the saving
What changed. Anthropic launched Claude Haiku 5.5, pricing it at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100,000 tokens, which it says runs around 75% cheaper than Haiku 4.5 and exactly matches OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna on price, according to Anthropic’s announcement and Simon Willison’s testing notes.
What it means for you. If your team uses Claude for everyday jobs like drafting replies or summarising documents, you can run far more of that work for the same monthly spend, as long as each job stays under 100,000 tokens.
The first step. Pull up your last Claude invoice this week and check which of your routine tasks could move to Haiku 5.5 without a quality drop.
The limitation. Simon Willison found Haiku 5.5 uses a new tokenizer that needs around 1.25 times as many tokens as Haiku 4.5 for the same prompt, which quietly eats into the saving, and the price jumps five times once you pass 100,000 tokens.
Simon Willison on Claude Haiku 5.5 (simonwillison.net)
Just shipped
OpenAI has rolled out GPT-6 with Intelligent UI to every paid ChatGPT tier, Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise, starting today. Instead of plain text, answers can now arrive as interactive charts, calculators and small tools you can use right inside the chat.
If you ask ChatGPT to explain something or compare options, the reply can now be something you click through rather than a wall of text, which makes it easier to show a client or teammate a comparison without building anything separately.
Try it next time you’d normally want a quick chart or calculator, like comparing two pricing options, and see what ChatGPT builds back. (x.com)
The rest of the day
🔐 Xero is using Cybersecurity Awareness Month to remind small business owners to check what they share with AI tools, alongside its usual advice on phishing and account security. Review your own habits this week: don’t paste client financial details into a chatbot you haven’t vetted. (blog.xero.com)
📊 Google Workspace is prompting Gemini users in Docs to turn a written brief straight into an on-brand Slides presentation, pulling in your files, emails and chats and adding milestones and formatting automatically. Try it next time leadership wants a same-day Slides version of something you already wrote. (x.com)
🛠️ Built with AI
Jason Lee built a reel of slick motion graphics using nothing but Claude Opus 5.5, turning plain prompts into the kind of animated explainer clip you’d normally hire a studio for. If you have a product launch coming up, try feeding Opus 5.5 your product brief and a style reference and ask it to storyboard a short promo before you touch an editing app. (youtube.com)
🧰 The Open Source Toolshed
What it is. Jan is a free, open-source assistant that works like ChatGPT but runs entirely on your own laptop, so nothing you type ever leaves your machine.
Who it’s for. Any small business that handles client contracts, financial details or health information and wants an AI assistant without sending that data to someone else’s server.
How hard it is. Install the app like any other program, no terminal and no account needed, and you’re chatting with it within a few minutes.
Open source. (github.com)
📈 The AI Odometer
Source: (research.socialcapital.com)
More than 7.5 million developers use CUDA and Nvidia’s related tools, and much of their code is built around that ecosystem.
What it means for you. The AI tools you rely on run on chips and software you never see, and if rivals really do pull workloads off Nvidia, pricing and availability across the AI products you use could move with it.
Too early
OpenAI has previewed ChatGPT for Teens alongside a “College Planner” tool, new study features and support for college advisers, but has given no date for when College Planner or the wider teen product actually ships. (x.com)
🚲 One for the road
Simon Willison tests every new AI model the same way: he asks it to draw an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle, an oddly specific task that has become his running benchmark.
He says Claude Haiku 5.5’s pelican is a clear step up from the previous Haiku’s attempt, proof that even the cheapest new model in town can still produce a weirdly charming bird on wheels. (x.com)