Anthropic’s most advanced AI tool, Fable 5, is struggling to attract corporate clients as businesses favour the company’s lower-cost alternatives, the Financial Times has reported.

The paper reported that Fable 5 accounts for only 11 per cent of total spend on Anthropic’s offerings more than two months after its release, drawing on data from 700,000 companies collected by payments group Ramp.

Analysts and investors in the company told the paper that the switch away from Anthropic’s flagship offering was driven primarily by Fable’s high price and the fact that older models are already capable of completing most tasks required by businesses.

If this shift is sustained, the FT added, it could lead to significant changes in the business models of frontier labs, which until now have relied on consistently releasing newer and more powerful AI tools to drive sales.

A partner at major investor Accel, Miles Clements, told the paper: “Most people don’t need to operate at the frontier,” adding that the era in which customers tended towards the most powerful models was not “durable”.

To fulfil the promised potential of AI, including the creation of machine systems at human intelligence or higher known as artificial general intelligence, companies will have to make significant developments in its abilities. These advanced models will increasingly be showcases, Clements said to the FT.

A secondary factor for businesses choosing older models over more recent and advanced offerings is political uncertainty. Fable 5’s launch was disrupted after the Trump administration forced Anthropic to withdraw the model citing national security concerns.

Though it has since been greenlit, this factor continues to influence decision making, analysts and investors told the paper.

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