This is the Deliveroo playbook of offering a ‘premium’ service that is really just the original service with the original slowed down.
Same with speedy boarding for airlines. Now almost everyone pays for it so you don’t even get a benefit.
Sure. But for now, this is a competitive space. The competitors offer models at a decent quality*speed/price ratio and prevent Anthopic from going too far downhill.
Actually, as I think about it... I don't enjoy any other model as much as Opus 4.5 and 4.6. For me, this is no longer a competitive space. Anthropic are in full right to charge premium prices for their premium product.
Here the scarcity is real, and profits are nowhere to be seen
These schemes will soon fall apart entirely when an open weight model can run on Groq/Cerebras/SambaNova at even higher speeds and be just fine for all tasks. Arguably already the case, but not many know yet.