Anthropic limits Mythos AI rollout over fears hackers could use model for cyberattacks

Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei speaks during the 56th annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 20, 2026.

Anthropic on Tuesday announced an advanced artificial intelligence model that will roll out to a select group of companies as part of a new cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing.

The model, Claude Mythos Preview, excels at identifying weaknesses and security flaws within software, and Anthropic is limiting access to try to prevent bad actors from exploiting that capability, the company said.

Anthropic said Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon Web Services are among the project's initial launch partners and will be able to use the model for defensive security work. More than 40 other companies, including CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, are also participating, Anthropic said.

"There was a lot of internal deliberation," Dianne Penn, Anthropic's head of research product management, told CNBC in an interview. "We really do view this as a first step for giving a lot of cyber defenders a head start on a topic that will be increasingly important."

Anthropic's announcement comes after descriptions of the model were discovered by Fortune in a publicly accessible data cache late last month. Cybersecurity stocks fell on the report, which said that the model had advanced cyber capabilities that also posed a significant risk.

The iShares Cybersecurity ETF was mostly flat during intraday trading on Tuesday.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of researchers and executives who defected from OpenAI over concerns about its direction and attitude toward safety.

The company spent years carefully constructing its reputation as a firm that was more dedicated to responsible AI deployment, and it unveiled Project Glasswing just weeks after its high-profile clash over safety with the Defense Department spilled into public view.

Anthropic said it's been in "ongoing discussions" with U.S. government officials about Claude Mythos Preview's cyber capabilities.