Germany’s central bank warns Mythos may reveal vulnerabilities in bank software

Speaking in Rome on Tuesday, Germany’s Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel warned Europe about Anthropic’s Mythos model and said it should not remain in the hands of a small group of large US companies.

Joachim said European companies and institutions that could be hit by the technology should be allowed to test it too, and fast. That way, they can judge both the upside and the danger on equal terms, according to him.

Joachim is also a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council, and he said for Germany, the issue is about whether banks in Europe are being asked to defend systems they are not even fully allowed to inspect against.

Germany tells European banks and regulators to get access before Mythos exposes more flaws

Joachim said, “The use of AI in the financial sector opens the door to new and sophisticated cyber risks, since autonomous AI agents could exhibit harmful behaviour. Early identification and mitigation of such risks are crucial for financial stability.”

The central banker described Mythos as a model that appears able to quickly find and use security holes in software used by financial institutions. He also said the model cuts both ways. It can help tighten digital defenses, but it can also be used to attack those same weak points. Joachim said, “We must prevent the misuse of this technology.” He also said, “At the same time, all relevant institutions should have access to such technology to avoid competitive distortions.”

He said Europe is coming into the AI age with some strong points, but it is still behind the United States and, in a number of areas, China.

Joachim pointed out that US institutions built 40 “advanced” AI models in 2024, while China made 15, and Europe made literally just 3.

He also said private AI investment in the US reached $109.1 billion, while China was at $9.3 billion and Europe was at $19.4 billion, and added that China’s lower private spending is balanced out by heavy government support, with state AI investment estimated at $62 billion.

In comparison, government AI investment was about $3.3 billion in the United States and about $1.2 billion in the European Union.

Anthropic signs a $100 billion Amazon deal as company remains unstoppable

Meanwhile, just yesterday, Anthropic released a statement that said it signed a new agreement that will deepen the existing tie-up and secure up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for training and deploying Claude. It said the new Trainium2 capacity will come online in the first half of this year, and nearly 1 gigawatt of total Trainium2 and Trainium3 capacity should be online by the end of 2026.

Anthropic (which is still going through a boycott by the Trump admin right now) said it has worked closely with Amazon (a close personal ally of Trump) since 2023, and that more than 100,000 customers now run Claude on Amazon Bedrock.

The company said: “Together we launched Project Rainier, one of the largest compute clusters in the world, and we currently use over one million Trainium2 chips to train and serve Claude.”

Under the new deal, the company said it will commit more than $100 billion over the next ten years to AWS technologies. That covers Graviton and chips from Trainium2 through Trainium4, with the option to buy later generations of Amazon’s custom silicon when they become available.

Anthropic said major Trainium2 capacity is coming in Q2, scaled Trainium3 capacity is expected later this year, and the deal also expands inference in Asia and Europe to serve Claude’s growing customer base. The company added that it will keep choosing AWS as its main training and cloud provider for mission-critical workloads.

Andy Jassy said, “Our custom AI silicon offers high performance at significantly lower cost for customers, which is why it’s in such hot demand.”

Andy also said, “Anthropic’s commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI.”

The crypto card with no spending limits. Get 3% cashback and instant mobile payments. Claim your Ether.fi card.