Claude Opus 4.6: The new revolutionary AI model for finance and legal

February 5, 2026, will remain a milestone date for tech teams at major corporations. Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4.6, its new flagship model, with a bold promise: to transform how finance, legal, and document analysis professionals work every day. After testing this model for several weeks, here’s what you need to know about this new generation of conversational AI.

A 1 Million Token Context Window: The Game Changer For Document Analysis

Forget the frustrating limitations of previous models. Claude Opus 4.6 can process 1 million input tokens and generate up to 128,000 output tokens. What does this mean in practice? You can submit a 500-page contract, an entire annual report, or dozens of legal documents all at once.

A corporate lawyer confided to me that they analyzed a complete due diligence file (847 pages across 23 files) in under 4 minutes. The model identified three potentially problematic change of control clauses that their team had missed after two days of manual review.

Key point: The 1M token window allows you to analyze the equivalent of 4 to 5 full books in a single query, while maintaining remarkable consistency across cross-references.

Adaptive Thinking: AI That Adjusts Its Effort

The Adaptive Thinking feature represents a subtle but powerful technical advance. The model automatically adjusts its depth of reasoning based on the complexity of the task. A simple question? Response in 200 milliseconds. A complex multi-dimensional financial analysis? The model takes the time it needs—sometimes 30 seconds—to structure a comprehensive answer.

This approach addresses a recurring issue: previous models would use the same computational power for “What time is it in Tokyo?” as for “Analyze the risks of this €2 billion acquisition.” The result? Substantial savings on API costs and response times that better fit user expectations.

Agent Teams: When AI Works As A Team

With Opus 4.6, Anthropic introduces the concept of Agent Teams. The idea: several instances of the model collaborate on a complex task, each with a specific role. One agent analyzes the data, another checks consistency, and a third synthesizes the conclusions.

Let’s take a concrete example for investment portfolio analysis:

• Analyst Agent: extracts financial metrics of the 50 portfolio companies
• Risk Agent: assesses sector and geographic exposure
• Compliance Agent: checks compliance with investment mandates
• Writer Agent: compiles a structured report with recommendations

Early feedback from beta testers reports a 60% reduction in preparation time for investment committees. If you want to dive deeper into the capabilities of AI assistants, our 2025 comprehensive AI models comparison guide gives a complete overview of the market.

“Vibe Working”: Anthropic Redefines Office Work

Anthropic has popularized a term that’s already trending in HR circles: vibe working. The concept? Let AI handle the routine and analytical tasks while humans focus on creativity, relationships, and strategic decision-making.

According to Anthropic’s internal data, business users of Opus 4.6 report spending 40% less time on document preparation and 35% more time on client interactions.

Real-World Use Cases In Finance

Financial analysts are already using Claude Opus 4.6 to:

1. Automatically extract KPIs from quarterly reports of 200+ tracked companies
2. Generate sector comparisons by cross-referencing public data and analyst notes
3. Draft investment notes with cited sources
4. Simulate valuation scenarios with variable assumptions

A Paris-based portfolio manager explained, “Before, my team of three analysts spent the first week of every quarter compiling results. Now, it’s done in two hours. They can finally focus on what matters: thinking strategically.”

Legal And Compliance Applications

The legal tech sector is embracing Opus 4.6 with enthusiasm. Its ability to ingest massive document corpora while maintaining source traceability meets a strong demand from legal departments.

Among the most popular features:

• Contract review with automatic identification of unusual clauses
• Contract version comparison with detailed changelogs
• Case law research with relevance scoring
• Generation of structured legal memos with cross-references

To see how these features fit into the Claude ecosystem, our article on Claude AI’s custom styles details the customization possibilities.

Claude Opus 4.6 vs. GPT-5.2 And Gemini 3: The Comparison

How does Opus 4.6 stack up against competing models? Here are the benchmarks that matter to businesses:

Enterprise Benchmarks (source: Anthropic): Claude Opus 4.6 scores 94.2% on financial document analysis tasks, compared to 91.8% for GPT-5.2 and 92.4% for Gemini 3. The gap widens for documents over 100,000 tokens, where Opus maintains 93.1% accuracy versus 84% for its competitors.

Opus 4.6 Strengths

• Context window: 1M tokens (GPT-5.2: 256K, Gemini 3: 500K)
• Maximum output: 128K tokens (GPT-5.2: 32K, Gemini 3: 64K)
• Consistency on long documents: 8–12% better according to independent tests
• Hallucinations: 67% reduced rate versus Claude 3 for factual tasks

Where OpenAI And Google Still Lead

GPT-5.2 keeps an edge on creative generation and complex coding tasks. Gemini 3 excels in multimodal analysis with native integration of Google Workspace data. Model choice therefore depends on your priority use cases.

Our Claude 3 vs ChatGPT comparison remains relevant for understanding the different philosophies of the two vendors, even as versions have evolved.

Pricing & Availability: What CIOs Need To Know

Claude Opus 4.6 is available via the Anthropic API and the Claude for Enterprise platform. Announced pricing:

• Input: $15 per million tokens
• Output: $75 per million tokens
• Enterprise offer: Decreasing prices with volume commitment + guaranteed SLA

The Enterprise offer includes dedicated features: SSO, audit logs, EU data residency, supervised fine-tuning, and 24/7 dedicated support. Businesses subject to regulatory constraints (banks, insurance, healthcare) benefit from a private cloud hosting option.

Security & Reliability: Anthropic’s Safeguards

Anthropic has integrated reinforced security mechanisms in Opus 4.6. The model categorically refuses to produce dangerous content, even in the face of advanced prompt injection techniques. Red team testing showed an 89% higher resistance to adversarial attacks compared to the previous generation.

On privacy, data processed through the API is never used for training. Companies retain full ownership of both their inputs and outputs. Anthropic contractually commits not to retain data longer than 30 days, with an immediate deletion option on request.

FAQ

What is the main difference between Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude 3.5 Opus?

Claude Opus 4.6 offers a context window four times larger (1M vs. 200K tokens), output capacity eight times greater (128K vs. 16K tokens), and includes the Agent Teams feature absent from the previous version. Enterprise benchmark performance is 15–20% higher.

Can Claude Opus 4.6 process scanned PDF documents?

Yes, the model has a built-in OCR capable of processing scanned PDFs with 98.7% accuracy on standard business documents. Handwritten documents are still less well-supported, with about 85% accuracy.

How is pricing handled for Agent Teams?

Each agent consumes tokens independently. A task using 4 agents will be billed as 4 separate requests. Anthropic offers volume bundles for heavy usage.

Are data used to train the model?

No. Anthropic contractually guarantees that data processed via the enterprise API is never used for training. This guarantee is audited by an independent third party.

Is Opus 4.6 available in Europe with local hosting?

Yes, the Enterprise offer provides an EU data residency option with hosting in Ireland and Germany. This option complies with the strictest GDPR requirements.

What is the average latency for a standard request?

Latency varies based on complexity thanks to Adaptive Thinking. Simple queries get a response in 200–500ms. Complex analyses can take 15 to 45 seconds for high-quality results.

Can Claude Opus 4.6 be fine-tuned on proprietary data?

The Enterprise offer includes a supervised fine-tuning option. The process requires at least 10,000 examples and technical guidance from Anthropic. The fine-tuned model remains hosted on Anthropic’s infrastructure.

How does Claude Opus 4.6 handle hallucinations on technical documents?

The model includes an automatic citation system that systematically references source passages. When information is not present in the context, it states so explicitly rather than inventing an answer.

Is integration with existing tools (SAP, Salesforce, etc.) possible?

Yes, via standard REST API or preconfigured connectors available for leading enterprise platforms. Anthropic also offers a partnership program for certified integrators.

What level of technical support is included in the Enterprise offer?

The Enterprise offer includes 24/7 support with a guaranteed 4-hour response time for critical incidents. A dedicated Customer Success Manager supports deployments of more than 100 users.