Elon Musk calls Anthropic AI leader, says no model as good as Mythos, Fable - CNBC TV18

Elon Musk's comments come after the US Department of Commerce lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 early this month. The restrictions had been imposed on June 12 over alleged national security concerns, forcing the AI company to suspend their availability.

Elon Musk has declared Anthropic the current "leader in AI", saying no company has released a model as good as Mythos and Fable, while admitting he was "clearly wrong" about the rival AI startup.

Musk was responding to an X post that claimed SpaceX AI now had a frontier model capable of competing with OpenAI's GPT-4.8 and that Anthropic was heavily reliant on computing capacity rented from SpaceX AI.

The post also resurfaced a September 2025 remark from Musk, in which he had said, "Winning was never in the set of possible outcomes for Anthropic."

"I was clearly wrong about Anthropic. They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon," Musk said.

His comments come after the US Department of Commerce lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 early this month. The restrictions had been imposed on June 12 over alleged national security concerns, forcing the AI company to suspend their availability.

The US had partially eased the curbs last month by allowing Anthropic to offer Mythos 5 to more than 100 "trusted" US organisations, including companies involved in critical infrastructure. Broader access, however, remained restricted until the controls were lifted.

Musk also rejected the suggestion that he could cut off Anthropic's access to computing resources to hurt the rival company.

"I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That's not my style," he said. The billionaire cited Tesla's open-source patents and its decision to make the Supercharger network available to competitors, as well as SpaceX's approach to competing satellite systems, as examples of allowing competition.