When Opus 5.5 launched, within a day you could see that it was a signfiicant step function in capabilities by just following regular subreddits like /r/AIGameDev and /r/ClaudeAI (but really anywhere people publish their software, if you can recognize it).
But this only works for frontier models. If MiniMax catches up to Opus 5.5 in 6 months, no one would notice.
But this only works for frontier models. If MiniMax catches up to Opus 5.5 in 6 months, no one would notice.
I'd be happy as hell if I end up being able to run an Opus 5.5-level model at home within a 6-month time horizon. May or may not happen based on China's export policy, of course.
The open weights we have may be as good as they ever get... but then that's been true all along, considering nobody really knows why they are releasing powerful models for free in the first place.
I think we keep getting used to intelligence improvements and the goal posts are always moving forward.
I remember that close to an year ago i felt the same way about opus 4.5. And even if you can easily run ds or qwen locally to get very similar results to that, we moved to 5.5 being the new target.
Deepseek can do 90% of the job but a claude reviwer/spec writer is a brutal improvement.
But this only works for frontier models. If MiniMax catches up to Opus 5.5 in 6 months, no one would notice.