Anthropic Ships Sonnet 5 and Claude Science on the Same Day, Valuation Hits $965B
Wednesday, July 1, 2026. Anthropic dropped two major bombshells yesterday: Claude Sonnet 5 officially launched as the default model for all users, and Claude Science was simultaneously released to let AI take over the scientific research pipeline. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic's valuation has reached $965 billion, just a step away from the trillion-dollar mark.
Major Events
#1 Anthropic Releases Claude Sonnet 5: Free Users Now Get "Near-Opus" Level Model
Anthropic officially released Claude Sonnet 5 on June 30, making it the default model for Free and Pro users immediately. Priced at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, it remains the same as the previous generation. According to the system card and multiple third-party evaluations, Sonnet 5 comprehensively surpasses Sonnet 4.6 in coding, tool use, and multi-step agent tasks, with some capabilities approaching Opus levels.
Simply put, Anthropic is playing the "high-end tech trickle-down" game—giving you an Opus experience at Sonnet prices, pushing the mid-tier price-to-performance ratio to a level with no competition. For developers, if you were settling for Sonnet because Opus was too expensive, it's time to re-evaluate.
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 | Source: Mashable
#2 Anthropic Simultaneously Launches Claude Science and Internal Drug Discovery Project, Officially Entering Life Sciences
On the same day, Anthropic released the AI scientific research platform "Claude Science," integrating over 60 scientific databases to automate biological and chemical research tasks like protein structure prediction. Even more aggressively, Anthropic also announced an internal drug discovery project specifically targeting therapies for "neglected diseases" that traditional pharmaceutical companies overlook.
Anthropic's stated reason: making drugs themselves is to accumulate first-hand experience and feed back into model optimization. But the practical effect is that it is transforming from a company that "sells APIs" into an AI lab with tangible scientific research capabilities. This is very rare among AI companies—not just building a platform, but getting directly involved in research. The application channel is already open, with a deadline of July 15, and the project runs from September to December.
Anthropic Claude Science | Source: STAT News
#3 Anthropic Valued at $965 Billion, One Step Away from Trillion-Dollar Mark
Bloomberg reported that Anthropic's valuation has reached $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI to become the world's highest-valued AI startup. The company, founded just five years ago, is approaching the trillion-dollar club at an astonishing speed.
An interesting detail: just two weeks ago, the US government restricted the export of Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models citing "national security," yet today the Commerce Department lifted those restrictions. Translation: Anthropic is now so large that the government is in a position of "wanting to regulate but not daring to regulate too tightly."
Anthropic Valuation | Source: Bloomberg via Instagram
Product & Technology
#4 OpenAI's First Hardware Isn't a Phone, It's a "Shortcut Keyboard" for Programmers
OpenAI previewed its first hardware product—Codex Micro, a programmable macro keyboard made in partnership with keyboard manufacturer Work Louder, launching on July 15. The product is based on Work Louder's Creator Micro 2 base, featuring 13 mechanical keys and a knob, specifically designed for quick actions within the Codex programming assistant.
Honestly, everyone was expecting that Jony Ive-designed "post-smartphone" device, but OpenAI pulled out a macro keyboard first. This choice is actually very smart—developers are OpenAI's core user base, and testing the hardware supply chain with a low-risk product is much more reliable than jumping straight into consumer electronics. But if you were expecting the "iPhone of the AI era," keep waiting.
OpenAI Hardware | Source: Business Insider
#5 OpenAI Internally Finds a Way to Halve Inference Costs; ChatGPT Guest Mode Requires Only Hundreds of GPUs
According to The Information, OpenAI engineers demonstrated a new inference optimization scheme to internal teams earlier this month that can cut model inference costs by over 50%. In tests for the guest ChatGPT scenario without accounts, the required number of Nvidia GPUs was compressed to just a few hundred at one point. Meanwhile, the ASIC chip project co-developed with Broadcom (codenamed "Jalapeño") is also progressing, designed from scratch specifically for large model inference.
What does cutting costs in half mean? It means OpenAI can push free services more aggressively to grab market share—a stark contrast to DeepSeek's price hike a couple of days ago. One side is lowering costs to expand users, the other is raising prices to harvest; the divergence between these two paths will only grow wider.
OpenAI Inference Optimization | Source: Fast Technology via Sina
#6 Meituan Open-Sources LongCat-2.0 Large Model, Claims Fully Trained on Domestic Chips
Chinese food delivery giant Meituan open-sourced its LongCat-2.0 large model, specifically emphasizing that the model was trained entirely on domestic chips. This is a noteworthy signal in the domestic tech giants' "de-Nvidianization" route—not only did they build it, they dared to open-source it and let the world see the code.
For domestic enterprises worried about supply chain risks, this is a positive reference point: it at least proves that for certain model scales and task types, domestic chips can already run through a complete training process. Of course, there's still a gap compared to the absolute performance of H100/B200, but the direction is correct.
Meituan Open Source Domestic Chips | Source: SiliconANGLE
Industry Signals
#7 UBTECH's "Cyber Companion" U1 Pricing Revealed: Up to 990,000 Yuan, Cheapest at 120,000
UBTECH officially announced the pricing for its bionic humanoid robot U1: the half-body U1 Lite is priced at 119,800 yuan, the full-body U1 Pro at 169,800 yuan, and the top-spec U1 Ultra at 990,000 yuan for the male version and 880,000 yuan for the female version. The silicone-covered shell can converse and make expressions, but there's still a noticeable gap compared to a real person.
Nearly a million yuan for a "cyber companion"—the pricing itself is the biggest news. It shows that humanoid robots have moved from the lab to the consumer market pricing stage. Even if it's absurdly expensive now, once production capacity and technology iterate, the price curve only goes down. The imaginative space for this track is much larger than many people think.
UBTECH Humanoid Robot | Source: Yicai
#8 Taiwan Intensifies AI Hardware Smuggling Investigations; Chip Geopolitics Continue to Heat Up
Reports indicate that Taiwanese authorities are intensifying investigations into AI hardware smuggling. Against the backdrop of tightening US chip export controls to China, gray market channels for high-end AI chips have become a focal point for all parties. Meanwhile, IBM released research progress on a 1-nanometer process chip, pushing the semiconductor technology race into a new phase.
The flip side of chip controls is a booming smuggling market—a classic cycle of "the more you ban, the more expensive it gets; the more expensive it gets, the more people take risks." Taiwan, as a core node in global chip manufacturing, will face increasing compliance pressure.
Chip Controls Taiwan | Source: CommonWealth Magazine
My Take
If you only read one piece of news today, make it Anthropic. In a single day, they released Sonnet 5, Claude Science, announced they're making drugs—all while carrying the halo of a $965 billion valuation. This "product + research + capital" three-pronged approach currently has no equal in the AI industry. OpenAI has a larger user base, Google has stronger infrastructure, but Anthropic is walking a path that feels most like a "tech company" rather than an "API supplier."
Another signal worth noting is cost. OpenAI internally halved its inference costs, while DeepSeek doubled its prices during peak hours a couple of days ago. One is dropping, the other is rising. This isn't just a difference in pricing strategy; it's a fundamental divergence in business models: burning cash for scale vs. surviving first. The watershed moment for the AI industry in the second half of the year might be right here.
Finally, a word on UBTECH's 990,000-yuan "cyber companion"—don't laugh at the pricing. A decade ago, no one thought a smartphone could sell for ten thousand yuan. The humanoid robot category is going through a pricing exploration phase from "0 to 1." What matters isn't the price today, but that someone has started pricing them seriously.