The launch of Anthropic’s AI model Mythos a month ago sent shockwaves through the cybersecurity world. The tech was so advanced, the AI company said, that it had found dozens of severe bugs in critical internet code.

Now, cyber startup Depthfirst says its own AI model has found even more bugs that Mythos missed for just a tenth of the cost, including critical flaws that could affect the majority of people using the web today. Depthfirst CEO Qasim Mithani says that because Depthfirst optimizes its models for one task, it can do for $1,000 what Mythos does for $10,000.

Depthfirst, which raised $80 million at a $580 million valuation in March, is also launching Open Defense Initiative, a program that offers companies and open source developers a total of $5 million in credit to use its artificial intelligence to find bugs in their code. It’s similar in concept to Anthropic’s limited release of Mythos, which it gave to a group of nearly 50 companies (and it’s now expanding). Depthfirst won’t pick and choose who can access its model, but will review applicants, at first limiting it to open source developers whose code is widely used or deployed in critical infrastructure.

By Thomas Brewster,

Forbes Staff

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