Anthropic’s Mythos is Here. Is OpenAI’s Spud Next?

A new era of powerful models is upon us. We're about to learn whether it's mostly marketing or field-advancing improvement.

After Anthropic’s introduction of Mythos — the mega-model it said is too dangerous to release to the public — OpenAI is poised for AI’s next big moment with “Spud.”

“Spud” is a massive new base model that OpenAI President Greg Brockman recently told us is “a new pre-train” that can understand instructions and context better. Brockman said Spud will be better “qualitatively” and “quantitatively” and better at solving “much harder problems.” Along with Mythos, it’s in a class of new, larger AI models whose performance will reveal just how much improvement is left in making AI models bigger.

“There’s this thing called ‘big model smell’ that people talk about, where when these models are just actually much smarter and much more capable, they bend to you much more,” Brockman said. “And you feel it — when you ask a question and the AI doesn’t quite get it, it’s always so disappointing. You have to explain it, you’re like: you really should be able to figure this out.”

Mythos, which Anthropic revealed last week, is a new general-purpose model the company says is too powerful to release publicly due to cybersecurity risks. It launched Project Glasswing — a closed program giving access to roughly 50 partners including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, CrowdStrike, JPMorgan Chase, and others. Anthropic illustrated the risks by including an anecdote in Mythos’s system card about a time Mythos successfully escaped its sandbox, which a researcher only discovered after receiving a surprise email from the model while eating a sandwich in a park.

Framing AI models as too dangerous to release and available only to a select group is starting to look like a new trend. When OpenAI recently hinted at a separate cybersecurity product it’s developing, company officials said it also plans to release it only to a small partner group.

That raises a number of questions worth considering as these models come out: Has “most dangerous” simply become a new way of signaling “most powerful”? Is all the scary stuff mostly marketing? Is this danger talk a cover story for a lack of compute needed to deliver these models to the public? And who benefits most when access to the most capable models is concentrated among a handful of companies that already dominate the industry?

It’s also hard not to notice the names Anthropic and OpenAI are using for their next-generation models. Spud calls to mind something plain, unassuming, and earthy. Mythos resembles something much more lofty and lasting. Like any myth, there’s always a chance the story is grander than reality.

For now though, companies and governments are taking the companies’ claims seriously. After Anthropic announced Mythos, the Treasury and the Fed both reportedly warned major banks about new AI risks posed by Mythos’s capabilities. The head of the International Monetary Fund is also reportedly worried and said that “time is not our friend on this one.”

Info-Tech LIVE 2026: Where CIOs Turn AI Momentum Into Measurable ROI (sponsor)

If you’re a CIO or senior IT leader, the pressure to show real business value from AI has never been higher. Info-Tech LIVE 2026 in Las Vegas puts you in the room with high-caliber IT executives solving enterprise-scale challenges and gives you the practical strategies you need to justify your AI spend and lead your organization through what comes next.

Submit your details through my link to claim your free ticket, subject to eligibility.

Sponsored by Info-Tech Research Group

The Intelligence Report

• A Bank of America analyst raised their chip forecast to $1.3 trillion, which is $300 billion higher than four months ago.

• Meanwhile, a recent report from McKinsey suggests the semiconductor market could double to $1.6 trillion by 2030, up from $775 billion in 2024.

• AI inference is likely to drive more data center demand than training, according to McKinsey, which expects the former to surpass the latter by 2030.

• Meta announced its new Muse, the first in a new “Spark” family of models, marking the first release in a while from the company’s superintelligence team. The company also announced a new $21 billion deal with CoreWeave to expand cloud computing capacity.

• Anthropic said its run-rate revenue has surpassed $30 billion, more than 3x what it was at the end of 2025. The update came as the company announced a new agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of compute

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy used his 2025 shareholder letter to make a bullish case for the company’s AI ambitions, defending heavy AI spending, plans to “flatten” the organization, and outlining a vision for how companies should navigate the AI era.

• OpenAI published a new policy blueprint pitching a broad social contract around AI that includes workforce support, public wealth funds, and institutional reforms.

• The European Union is exploring whether ChatGPT should be considered a large online search engine under the Digital Services Act, which would make it subject to much stricter EU regulation related to AI and data privacy.

Federal and State Governments Zero In on AI

Data centers are facing growing pressure at the national, state, and local level. Congress, state lawmakers, and local governments are exploring ways to ban, pause and, otherwise regulate AI infrastructure amid concerns about rising electricity costs, environmental impacts and economic uncertainty.

• Last week, Maine lawmakers passed legislation that would create a moratorium on data centers larger than 20 megawatts through November 2027 and create a new state council to evaluate issues related to current and future potential data centers in the state. The bill still needs to be signed by Governor Janet Mills, who is also running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, where she’s been trailing by double digits.

• While Maine might be the first state, nearly a dozen other states are considering their own pauses or bans on data center construction, including Virginia, Georgia, New York and Vermont.

• Governors are also applying pressure. A bipartisan group of governors from Illinois, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania sent a letter last week to PJM Interconnection — the grid operator serving much of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest — calling for data centers to pay more for power and for stronger consumer protections. One of the signatories is Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has separately proposed a pause on his state’s data center tax credit program.

• In Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a new bill last month that would create a national moratorium on data centers with no fixed end date, keeping the ban in place until Congress passes a broader package of AI safety and labor protections. The bill would also ban the export of semiconductors, chips, and other computing hardware to countries that don’t have equivalent AI regulations in place — a provision that would have sweeping implications for U.S. trade policy.

This week, Congress returns from recess with committees in both chambers scheduled to discuss AI issues and other tech-related topics.

• On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee will meet to discuss AI’s economic impact on workers and employers. The hearing will be the latest in an ongoing series to understand AI’s impact on issues like work broadly, workplace safety, teaching in the AI age, and employer-led workforce training.

• The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will meet on Tuesday for a markup of several tech-related bills.

• Two bi-partisan social media bills are on the agenda. One is the “Stop the Scroll Act,” which would direct the FTC, with Surgeon General approval, to require mental health warning labels on social media platforms. The other, the “No Fentanyl on Social Media Act,” would require the FTC to report to Congress on minors getting access to fentanyl on social media.

• The National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act of 2026 would accelerate quantum technology development and real-world applications. The bipartisan bill has already received endorsements from Google, Microsoft, IBM, the American Physical Society, and various quantum companies and academic institutions.

Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition: Anthropic’s Mythos Dilemma, Violence Against AI, Tokenmaxxing at Meta

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Anthropic’s new Mythos preview 2) Is Mythos marketing or a legit breakthrough? 3) The Mythos sandwich guy story 4) OpenAI and Anthropic’s brewing 1st party vs. API conflict of interest 5) The Meta-Harness 6) Violence against AI on the rise 7) Maine is going to pass a data center moratorium 8) Was Medvi really a $1.8 billion two person startup? 9) Tokenmaxxing is all the rage

You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast app of choice

Join Big Technology’s Private Discord Server!

Where we’ll talk about this story, the latest in AI, the week’s podcast, and plenty more. You can sign up via the link below: