The U.S.government is allowing Anthropic to deploy its Mythos 5 model to a select group of customers and partners, according to a letter from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Anthropic that was seen by NBC News.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.In the letter, Lutnick wrote that the government was confident in the guardrails Anthropic had put in place to allow trusted users to access the powerful AI system.
The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.Mythos 5 access will be restored to around 100 organizations that include government agencies and private companies, according to people familiar with the matter.The individuals said the restoration will help ensure the organizations can use the model for defensive cyber purposes.
Semafor first reported the letter.“Today, the government notified us that Mythos 5, our strongest cybersecurity model, can be redeployed to a set of US organizations that operate and defend critical infrastructure,” Anthropic wrote in a post on X Friday night.A source close to the company said that Anthropic will continue to hold discussions with the government over the weekend as it seeks to restore access to Fable 5, its most recent and most powerful mass-consumer model.
Two weeks ago, Lutnick invoked export control authorities to require Anthropic to shut off access to its two most capable systems, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, citing threats to national security.Lutnick’s Friday move that allows Anthropic to restore limited access to Mythos 5 comes hours after Anthropic competitor OpenAI announced it would release its latest and most advanced series of models, the GPT-5.6 family, in phases per the federal government’s request.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X that the staggered debut was “bad news,” as the company had instead planned on a wider, open-access launch.
In a blog post announcing the new models, OpenAI ...