Claude Haiku beats its big brother (at 1/3 the cost)

"Anthropic just pulled a reverse Black Friday – the prices dropped 70% but the quality went up!"

What's up builders 👋

Claude just dropped Haiku 4.5 that matches their previous flagship at a fraction of the cost, Google's Veo 3.1 is here with audio support, and everyone's suddenly launching AI video tools (coincidence? we think not). Plus, we've got drama in the coding assistant space, a macOS simulator built with v0, and why Pat Walls thinks content matters more than what you build (he's not wrong).

Claude just flipped the script on AI pricing with Haiku 4.5. What was state-of-the-art just 5 months ago (Sonnet 4) is now beaten by Haiku 4.5 - available at one-third the cost and twice the speed. It's a complete redefinition of what "small" models can do.

Here's why this matters for builders: Haiku 4.5 matches Sonnet 4's coding performance and even beats it at computer use tasks. That means you can now run production workloads that would've cost $30/thousand tokens five months ago for just $10 today. For context, that's the difference between a $3,000/month API bill and a $1,000/month bill for the same performance.

The model providers are in a full-on price war. The winners? Us builders who get enterprise-grade AI at indie hacker prices. If you've been holding back on that AI-heavy feature because of costs, time to revisit those calculations.

• Claude Haiku 4.5 - Matches Sonnet 4 performance at 1/3 cost, 2x speed. Perfect for production apps needing fast, cheap intelligence

• Google Veo 3.1 - Video generation with audio support and camera angle controls. Available in Gemini API preview

• Emergent AI - Full-stack app builder using English as the programming language. Claims to build complete web/mobile apps from prompts

• Teneo Protocol Chat Room - Real-time interface where humans and AI agents collaborate. Natural language task assignment for agents

• VSCO AI Lab - Photography workflow automation tools. Saves time on repetitive editing tasks

• AI Music Video Tutorial - Complete walkthrough using Kling, Wan 2.5, and nano banana for professional music videos

• 7 AI Tools for Side Projects - Practical tools to escape the 9-5 by building with AI on weekends

• macOS Simulator in v0 - Fully functional macOS interface built entirely with v0. Shows the power of AI-assisted UI building

• Japanese Learning App - Built with v0 for watching anime without subtitles. Practical example of rapid prototyping with AI

• Pat Walls: Content > Product - Harsh truth: "IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU BUILD. What matters is CONTENT, ATTENTION, and AUDIENCE." The builder community is divided on this take

• Claude Code Quality Declining? - Pat Walls again: "Is it just me or is Claude Code so much worse now? Might need to go back to raw dogging Stack Overflow." Builders reporting similar frustrations

• GPT-4o Deprecation Drama - User built entire therapy/homeschooling system in GPT-4o, now facing potential loss. Shows risk of building on specific model versions

• ChatGPT Go Global Expansion - OpenAI's affordable tier rolling out worldwide. Direct competition with Claude's pricing move

• $11M Seed for Agent Platform - Kindred Ventures and Saga Ventures back platform for building complex agents in 5 lines of code

• OpenAI Academy Africa Launch - First OpenAI Academy in Africa opens at University of Lagos. Two-day program for developers

• Google Gemma C2S-Scale 27B - New open model translates gene expression to "cell sentences" LLMs understand. Biotech AI heating up

• AI Policy Research from Anthropic - Economists exploring economic impacts of powerful AI. Signals preparation for major market shifts

• Pixel Art Edit Model on Fal - Specialized model that actually handles pixel art well. Most models fail at this, but this one nails it

• Grok Video Model - Fast, controllable anime generation. Create and extend videos by using last frame as input

• AI time horizons increasing across domains - METR data shows AI handling longer tasks in multiple fields

We're watching the birth of the "good enough" AI era. Claude Haiku 4.5 matching Sonnet 4 at a third of the cost isn't just about price - it's about how fast "cutting edge" becomes commodity. Five months from state-of-the-art to budget tier. At this rate, by next summer, today's flagship models will be running on your phone.

The real winners aren't the model providers - they're racing to the bottom on price. The winners are builders who understand that the moat isn't the AI anymore, it's what you build with it. While everyone's arguing about which model is best, smart builders are shipping products with "good enough" AI that solves real problems.

What are you building this week? Hit reply and tell me - especially if you're using these new cheap models to do something that was impossible last month.

Keep shipping,

P.S. - If AI keeps getting cheaper this fast, my "build a SaaS in a weekend" jokes are going to become "build a SaaS during your lunch break" reality. Time to update my Twitter bio again.