Last Updated on October 23, 2026 by TMB
Bank of America, one of the US’ largest financial institutions, recruited many external software experts to help patch software issues exposed by Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tool. The company had to hire a thousand people to fix bugs Mythos discovered.
Bank of America and Mythos
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan revealed this during the bank’s third-quarter earnings release. Speaking to CNBC, Moynihan said:
“We put on 1,000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and those people remain here today, helping us, on top of the 3,000 people we have in that area.” Earlier, CNBC said Moynihan confirmed the bank also spent a “couple hundred million plus” in the third quarter on software rectification, as well as regulatory issues related to compliance with anti-money laundering requirements.
Anthropic had released Mythos in April 2026, a tool renowned for its unmatched capabilities. Mythos can autonomously find and leverage vulnerabilities in any software. However, Anthropic reportedly restricted access to a few entities because of its capabilities. The permitted entities were the US government, cybersecurity firms, banks, and a few other organizations. Reportedly, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase were two of the companies entrusted with Mythos. Moynihan said the increase in bug-fixing expenses is temporary, suggesting it will not be a sustained expense once the patches are fully implemented.
Anthropic describes Mythos as a tool that can outperform the most talented humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. According to the company, before long, AI tools will become so capable that “the fallout – for economies, public safety, and national security – could be severe.” In fact, Anthropic said Mythos Preview has found “high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser.”
Bank of America’s $1.2 Billion Fine
Recently, the US Treasury Department announced a $1.2 billion fine for Bank of America for failing to uphold anti-money laundering requirements properly. In a statement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a bank of Bank of America’s size failing to meet its AML obligations causes problems that affect the entire country’s financial system. According to the statement, the bank did not report $5 billion in illicit or suspicious transactions in a timely manner. This total includes more than $1 billion linked to national security and financial risks.
The amount is the US Treasury Department’s third-largest fine ever. The first two are a 2023 settlement with Binance of about $4 billion, and about $3 billion with TD Bank.
The Bank of America fine is another US government fine against a financial institution. Recently, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) imposed a $350 million fine on the American Express National Bank for similar contraventions. The OCC states that the bank’s AML and BSA risk assessments were inadequate, allowing up to $13 billion in suspicious transactions over a decade.
