Or maybe 5.5 turned out to be kind of disappointing and they’re going to just go for like a 5.6 or 6 next instead.
Look at OpenAI, they've been outclassed by Opus 5.5 two months ago; obviously they don't yet have a response.
Now Anthropic is releasing this lackluster Fable 5.2, a week or two before their IPO.
It's barely an improvement at all, makes exactly the same mistakes as Opus 5.5. Not even worth using with the speed and cost penalty.
The much rumored internal Anthropic model is listed on the Fable 5.2 system card as an even smaller improvement over Mythos 5.2 than Fable is over Opus 5.5.
I expected a larger version of Opus 5.5 would be a significant improvement to launch before the IPO. Turns out it didn't scale and the improvement is marginal.
I am quite disappointed.
Who knows why they are saving it. Maybe it needs more training and alignment? Maybe they're timing the media attention around the IPO.
My hypothesis - OpenAI and Anthropic are locked in battle. Whoever takes a step, the other one mirrors.
Based on this hypothesis, I think we can expect to see a new Astra model soon given the new Fable release.
And it could be that Anthropic released Fable 5.2 and kept 5.5 in reserve, in case the new Astra model performs better than 5.2