Last week, CNBC learned that Vice President J.D. Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asked CEOs of major technology companies about the security of artificial intelligence models and how to respond to cyberattacks before Anthropic released its new Mythos model.
The meeting took place over the phone, said two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because the event is private.
One of them is Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, xAI’s Elon Musk, googleSundar Pichai of OpenAI, Sam Altman of OpenAI, microsoftMr. Satya Nadella, cloud strikewith George Kurtz palo alto networksNikesh Arora was also present.
The technology company CEOs met to discuss the security posture and safe deployment of language models at scale, the person said. Officials also discussed how to respond if the model were stretched in favor of attackers.
Antropic officials declined to comment on the meeting, but told CNBC on Friday that the company has been in contact with senior officials regarding cybersecurity in recent weeks and is making itself available to help “test and evaluate the government’s own technology.”
“Prior to external release, Anthropic briefed senior U.S. government officials on the full capabilities of Mythos Preview, including both offensive and defensive cyber applications,” the official said. “It has been a priority from the beginning to engage governments early on what this model can do, where the risks are and how they are being managed.”
OpenAI and CrowdStrike declined to comment on the meeting. The White House and other companies did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Anthropic on Tuesday made Mythos AI models available to a limited group of companies as it evaluates ways to prevent hackers from using them. appleGoogle, Microsoft, NvidiaPalo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike were among the early launch partners.
Mr. Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell this week called a surprise meeting with the heads of major U.S. banks to address the potential threat from Mythos, signaling further Trump administration concerns about advanced cyber tools.
It was also a sign that Anthropic remains part of the AI conversation within the White House, as President Donald Trump seeks to strip the startup’s Claude platform from federal agencies.
Anthropic’s legal challenge to the Department of Defense’s supply chain risk designation remains in court after two adverse rulings on opposite sides of the country.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday denied the company’s request to temporarily block its blacklisting, weeks after a federal judge in San Francisco granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction in a separate legal challenge.
The adverse ruling continues to block Anthropic from contracts with the Department of Defense, but allows it to continue working with other federal agencies while the lawsuit progresses.
—CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this article.
