The proficiency of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview at discovering vulnerabilities has once again shaken investor confidence in major software and security players, according to reports.
Investors are airing renewed concerns over potential disruption to the software and cybersecurity sectors from AI advancements, according to reports, leading to a major drop in the stock prices of numerous top players Thursday.
The latest sell-off was prompted by Anthropic’s disclosure earlier this week about the proficiency of its Claude Mythos Preview model at discovering software vulnerabilities, the reports from outlets including Reuters and Barron’s indicated.
[Related: Anthropic Claude Mythos Suggests Vulnerability Management Will Soon ‘Break’: Forrester]
The preview version of the Claude Mythos frontier model shows that AI models can now “surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities,” Anthropic said in a post Tuesday.
The Anthropic announcement also disclosed a new initiative, “Project Glasswing,” focused on combating software vulnerabilities with involvement from a number of major industry players.
Despite the expanded collaboration between Anthropic and major software industry vendors—as well as gains in the broader stock market indexes Thursday—share prices slid for many key players in the industry.
Top names in software that saw a significant drop as of the close of regular trading Thursday included Snowflake (down 11.8 percent to $132.31 a share), Cloudflare (down 8.6 percent to $193.15 a share) and ServiceNow (down 7.9 percent to $89.80 a share). Each of the companies has a growing security business in addition to their core SaaS and cloud platform offerings.
Within the cybersecurity sector, Zscaler saw the largest decline Thursday with its stock price falling 11.4 percent to $122.21 a share. A report from Seeking Alpha pointed to recent mixed assessments by analysts about whether AI is a headwind or a tailwind for Zscaler.
Other major players that saw stock price declines as of the close of regular trading Thursday included CrowdStrike (down 7.5 percent to $394.68 a share), Palo Alto Networks (down 3.9 percent to $166.99 a share) and SentinelOne (down 5.4 percent to $12.78 a share).
Recent months have seen investor confidence shaken repeatedly by announcements of new capabilities from Anthropic and other leading AI platforms.
Still, the latest drop may come as a surprise to some, given the direct involvement of so many top industry players in Anthropic’s latest announcement. Project Glasswing includes participation from AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palo Alto Networks.
Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora wrote in a LinkedIn post that “by prioritizing defensive access to these powerful capabilities, Anthropic is helping us ensure that while intelligence is being weaponized, the defenders are the ones with the superior stack.”
In a statement included in Anthropic’s blog post, CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev wrote that the Claude Mythos Preview clearly “demonstrates what is now possible for defenders at scale,” though it also means threat actors will inevitably seek to exploit these capabilities as well.
The industry collaborators on the initiative will be able to utilize the preview version of Mythos “as part of their defensive security work,” Anthropic said in its post.
“Project Glasswing partners will receive access to Claude Mythos Preview to find and fix vulnerabilities or weaknesses in their foundational systems—systems that represent a very large portion of the world’s shared cyberattack surface,” Anthropic said.
