METR says Anthropic's capability growth is likely about twice its earlier pace

METR's report, dated 5 November 2026, describes a high-access evaluation at Anthropic from 12 August to 29 October 2026. METR says that, as of October 2026, Anthropic is likely improving its models' capabilities on well-specified tasks at around twice the rate it did between March 2024 and October 2025. It says that estimate is uncertain, and that it would not be surprised if the true figure were closer to 1.3x or 3x the historical rate. On benchmark scores measured with AECI, which it describes as Anthropic's version of the Epoch Capabilities Index, it estimates growth since October 2025 at 1.9x the pre-October 2025 rate, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.5–2.8x. It says that implies roughly two years of historical progress over the last year. It says it is confident the acceleration was not caused by faster scaling of training compute. It says a majority of the acceleration today is likely attributable to Anthropic's use of AI in research and development, with significant uncertainty, and that other causes likely played a large role in late 2025.

METR says Anthropic redacted a majority of the evidence METR found most informative for its risk conclusions. It quotes Anthropic's description of those redactions as "aimed at removing confidential information that could accelerate other AI developers." It says it did not see evidence of significant bottlenecks, over the next 12 months, from algorithmic progress, training compute, experiment compute or data, and that it is not confident in that assessment because its view of the bottlenecks changed as it received more detail.

What it means for business: this is METR's judgment after access that Anthropic arranged, and METR says much of the supporting evidence was redacted. It does not change a legal duty. The 1.9x figure is METR's estimate for one benchmark index, with the interval stated above. This describes the report. It is not a forecast a firm can treat as its own.