finance Apr 17, 2026

Anthropic's Dario Amodei to meet with White House about Mythos

C

CNBC Finance

3 min read
Key Points
  • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is meeting with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to discuss the company's new Mythos AI model, CNBC confirmed.
  • The meeting comes less than two months after President Donald Trump blacklisted Anthropic.
  • Mythos excels at identifying weaknesses and security flaws within software, according to Anthropic, and it's rolling out the model to a select group of companies.
Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei speaks during the 56th annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 20, 2026.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is meeting with Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, on Friday to discuss the company's powerful new Mythos model that was announced earlier this month, CNBC confirmed, a thaw in the standoff between the government and leading AI company. 

Anthropic appears to be inching back into the White House's good graces, weeks after President Donald Trump blacklisted the company and called it a national security risk, declaring that his administration would "not do business with them again."

Mythos excels at identifying weaknesses and security flaws within software, according to Anthropic, and the company said it has been engaging in "ongoing discussions" with U.S. government officials about its capabilities. Anthropic is rolling the model out to a select group of companies as part of a new cybersecurity initiative, and does not have plans to release it publicly.

Anthropic declined to comment. Axios was first to report the meeting.

Just weeks prior, Anthropic and the Trump administration were firmly on the outs. Anthropic sued the government to try to reverse its blacklisting in courts in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and those cases are ongoing.

The lawsuits followed a dramatic few weeks of negotiations between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, which clashed over how the agency could use the company's models. The DOD wanted Anthropic to grant the Pentagon unfettered access to its models for all lawful purposes, while Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance. 

The talks stalled, and the DOD declared Anthropic a supply chain risk in early March, meaning that use of the company's technology purportedly threatens U.S. national security. The label requires defense contractors to certify that they don't use Anthropic's Claude AI models in their work with the military.

Trump then ordered all federal agencies to "IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology" in a Truth Social post, but that directive has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge in San Francisco.

It's not immediately clear how the DOD is thinking about Mythos, but the agency has continued to use Anthropic's models in the war in Iran. At the very least, the power of Mythos seems to be changing the broader tone from the Trump administration.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell met with the heads of the top U.S. banks last week about the AI model. The week before, Vice President JD Vance and Bessent also met with Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and other top tech execs about AI cybersecurity.

Amoedi's meeting with Wiles is the latest signal that tensions could be easing.

--CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report

WATCH: White House, Anthropic CEO to meet as departments seek Mythos access

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