Sam Altman throws shade at Anthropic’s cyber model, Mythos: ‘fear-based marketing’
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In Brief Posted: 11:51 AM PDT · April 21, 2026 Image Credits:Taylor Hill/FilmMagic / Lucas Ropek Sam Altman throws shade at Anthropic’s cyber model, Mythos: ‘fear-based marketing’ OpenAI and Anthropic continue to take swipes at each other. This week, during a podcast appearance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called out his competitor’s new cybersecurity model, noting that the company was using fear to make its product sound more impressive than it actually is. Anthropic announced Mythos earlier this month, releasing the model to a small cohort of enterprise customers. The company has claimed that Mythos is too powerful to be released to the public out of concern that cybercriminals will weaponize it. Critics have said this rhetoric is overblown. During an appearance on the podcast “Core Memory,” Altman implied that Anthropic’s “fear-based marketing” was a good way to keep AI in the hands of a small and exclusive elite. “There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people,” he said. “You can justify that in a lot of different ways.” “It is clearly incredible marketing to say, ‘We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million,’” he added. Fear-based marketing was not invented by Anthropic. Arguably, much of the AI industry has leveraged scare tactics and hyperbole to make its tools sound powerful. Ongoing rhetoric about how AI may lead to the end of the world hasn’t just come from luddite doomer activists; it has also come from the people selling this technology to the public—Altman included. Topics AI, AI, Anthropic, Mythos, OpenAI, sam altman April 30 San Francisco, CA StrictlyVC kicks off the year in SF. Get in the room for unfiltered fireside chats with industry leaders, insider VC insights, and high-value connections that actually move the needle. Tickets are limited. REGISTER NOW Newsletters See More Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news TechCrunch Daily News Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch Mobility TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.
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