In 46 days Anthropic launched, suspended and completed an entire model generation. The press release says the circle is closed. The pattern running through it — a regression that looked deliberate, a successor sold as a fix, the same complaint resurfacing three days after "closing it" — is still open.

A classic move that never dies: lower the price, then make the billable unit more expensive. Sonnet 5 does it with a new tokenizer, while almost catching up with Opus.

The cloud felt infinite until someone actually read the invoice: the AI industry is leaving the age of subsidies behind and entering the age of the token meter. The shift toward pay-as-you-go pricing exposes the real cost of artificial intelligence and reopens uncomfortable questions about sustainability, dependence, and productivity.