Stocks of software companies in the US took a hit after Anthropic held back on a large-scale release of its new and powerful AI model 'Claude Mythos' over fears that it could expose hidden cybersecurity vulnerablities.
The Dario Amodei led company had said that it would only let a selected bunch of around 40 companies, including Microsoft and Google, access the AI model.
Of all the companies, Cloudflare Inc.'s stock plunged the lowest, down nearly 12%, to around $186 in the Nasdaq Composite index. Other cybersecurity stocks such as CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and SentinelOne dropped over 6% and 5% each.
Zscaler's stock also saw a sharp fall by 9.19% to $124.73. Besides this, stock of major chipmaker Palantir Technologies Inc. was down over 6% to $132.17.
Other key tech stocks in the S&P 500 index such as Adobe Inc., Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., and Accenture also slipped. Adobe fell over 4% to nearly $229, Cognizant was down by 3.26% to $59, and Accenture slid over 5% to around $183
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Earlier this week, Anthropic had stated that Mythos has already found thousands of vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser, triggering jitters around software companies.
"If Mythos is that strong and that powerful and it's exposing these vulnerabilities that have been around for years, it just shows one, the weakness of the current software that's out there and two, that AI is still making incredible progress versus legacy software companies," Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.
The S&P 500 Software and Services Index, which dropped 3.4% on Thursday, is down close to 26% this year. Fears around the rapid progress in artificial intelligence negatively impacting SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies that sell subscription-based products to clients has heavily weighed on the index.
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