Throne Wars: When Claude Opus 4.6 Clashes with GPT-5.3 Codex

At 2:00 AM on February 6, 2026 (Beijing Time), Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.6. 20 minutes later, OpenAI followed up with GPT-5.3 Codex. Two top-tier AI companies releasing flagship models within the same time window is extremely rare in the industry's history. Even more significant—this was no coincidence, but a carefully orchestrated head-to-head confrontation. Anthropic's Opening Move:…