Anthropic's Cheaper Models Win Out as Fable 5 Spend Stalls at 11%

Anthropic declined to comment when reached by the FT. PYMNTS has contacted the company but has not yet gotten a reply.

Fable 5's debut in June was interrupted when the White House forced the company to withdraw the model over national security concerns. The Trump administration has since allowed Anthropic to relaunch it. Analysts and investors said price and performance remain a larger concern in determining which model customers choose.

The lower demand for Fable adds to the uncertainty facing Anthropic before its IPO, which could arrive in the weeks ahead and value the company at at least $2 trillion. That would be the largest IPO on record, surpassing SpaceX, which raised $75 billion at the outset and later upped that figure to $86.2 billion with an overallotment option.

In a separate development, PYMNTS reported last week that Gen Z workers made up 69% of new hires for two of the highest-paying individual roles in AI last year: forward-deployed engineers and AI engineers. At the same time, 91% of AI workers hold at least a bachelor's degree, a share that surpasses 95% in many of the highest-paying AI jobs.

"What emerges is a labor market splitting in two directions," the report said. "A narrow group of young, technically fluent workers is being promoted faster and paid more than any previous generation at the same career stage. Everyone else, including many young workers without a technical degree or specific AI skills, is competing for a shrinking supply of the entry-level roles that used to be everyone's way in."