What is Opus?

Opus is an AI model, likely a version of Anthropic’s Claude, referenced in discussions about code generation and token efficiency.

• Dec 2025 - Tobi Lütke said Opus changed everything for his engineers, with many top engineers not writing code since that month.
• Mar 2026 - Siddhant Pardeshi noted that real-world performance of models like Opus can differ vastly from benchmarks.
• May 2026 - Gavin Baker stated that Claude on Opus generates 70% fewer tokens for the same question compared to other models.
• May 2026 - Jason Lemkin reported that about 95% of OpenAI calls his team uses are with Mini, implying Opus is less used for those tasks.
• May 2026 - Krishna Rao observed Jevons paradox with Opus: lower price led to disproportionately higher consumption.