Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing on Aug. 17 and gained restricted access to Claude Mythos 5 for defensive cybersecurity work.

The company plans to use the artificial intelligence model to scan its software environments for vulnerabilities over the coming weeks. Findings will enter Payward’s existing security review process rather than automatically producing software changes.

Payward also said it intends to disclose validated vulnerabilities affecting third party open source projects to their maintainers. The company did not identify its first scanning targets, publish a deployment schedule or disclose the cost of its Mythos 5 access.

Payward will scan its software environments

Payward said Claude Mythos 5 will examine all company environments for software weaknesses. Its infrastructure supports digital asset trading, custody and settlement services that remain available continuously.

The announcement does not specify whether Mythos 5 will receive access to production systems, isolated copies of source code or controlled testing environments. Payward also did not describe how its security team will validate findings before approving fixes.

False positives remain a practical concern when artificial intelligence systems review complex software. A model may identify unreachable code, duplicate an existing report or misunderstand how a component operates in production. Human review is therefore required before teams classify an issue as a vulnerability.

The Ethereum Foundation reached a similar conclusion while testing AI security agents. As crypto.news reported, its researchers found that AI generated vulnerability reports still required independent human validation, particularly when agents examined complex protocol code.

Payward cochief executive Arjun Sethi said AI could change the imbalance between attackers and defenders by reading code at greater scale.

“A model can read every line of code the way an attacker would, at machine scale, so we find the flaw before anyone can build the exploit,” Sethi said.

The statement describes Payward’s intended defensive advantage. The company has not yet published results showing how many valid flaws Mythos 5 found within its systems.

Project Glasswing restricts access to vetted partners

Anthropic launched Project Glasswing in April 2026 to give selected infrastructure providers and software maintainers early access to its strongest cybersecurity models.

Initial participants included Amazon Web Services, Apple, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks and the Linux Foundation. Anthropic later expanded the initiative to approximately 150 organizations across more than 15 countries.

The company says participating organizations must meet security requirements before receiving access. Mythos 5 is not generally available because the same capabilities used to identify vulnerabilities can also help produce working exploits.

As previously reported, Anthropic restored Mythos access only to vetted U.S. organizations after the U.S. government lifted temporary export restrictions. The safeguarded Claude Fable 5 model returned to wider availability.

Payward said its access followed the U.S. decision allowing Mythos 5 to reach organizations that operate and defend critical infrastructure. Anthropic’s official model page confirms that access was restored for a set of U.S. organizations following government approval.

Neither Anthropic nor the U.S. government has publicly designated every digital asset platform as critical infrastructure. Payward’s statement that such platforms “belong on that list” represents the company’s position rather than a formal government classification.

Claude Mythos 5 carries defensive and offensive risks

Anthropic describes Claude Mythos 5 as its most capable model for cybersecurity and biology research. The model can inspect code, identify weaknesses, suggest patches and assist approved researchers with testing exploit paths.

Project Glasswing’s earlier Mythos Preview reportedly found more than 10,000 flaws classified as high or critical severity across widely used software. Anthropic’s coordinated disclosure dashboard showed 1,596 vulnerabilities reported across 281 open source projects as of May 22.

Those figures are Anthropic’s measurements and do not mean every initial model finding was valid. Its dashboard recorded a 90.8% true positive rate among 1,900 candidates reviewed by external security firms.

Anthropic said independent human triage remains the limiting stage. Only 97 listed findings had been patched upstream at the time of the dashboard update, while 88 had received a public advisory identifier.

The model can also create exploit components and combine them into attack chains. Anthropic cited this dual use capability when explaining why Mythos 5 remains limited to approved partners.

In related coverage, researchers found that Mythos class models could turn software flaws into working exploit chains. Wider access would therefore give attackers some of the same capabilities available to defenders.

Open source findings will go to maintainers

Payward said vulnerabilities discovered in shared third party code will be sent to the relevant project maintainers. It presented that process as a way to protect other organizations using the same software.

The company did not publish a coordinated disclosure policy for the initiative. Important unanswered details include how long maintainers will have to patch flaws, which findings Payward may disclose publicly and how it will handle projects that do not respond.

Responsible disclosure normally requires researchers to verify a vulnerability, contact the maintainer privately and allow time for remediation before releasing technical information. Premature publication can expose users before a patch becomes available.

Payward has previously faced disputes over security research. As crypto.news reported, Kraken patched a deposit flaw that researchers used to withdraw nearly $3 million. The exchange later recovered the funds following a public disagreement with CertiK.

That episode was unrelated to Project Glasswing, but it shows why clear testing and disclosure rules matter. AI scanning can increase the number of reported findings, creating additional work for security teams and maintainers.

What happens next for Payward’s AI security rollout

Payward plans to begin scanning its environments within weeks. The next verifiable updates would include confirmed vulnerabilities, completed patches or public disclosures coordinated with affected open source projects.

No performance targets were announced. Payward did not say how frequently Mythos 5 will scan its systems or whether the model will review new code before deployment.

Anthropic requires Mythos 5 customers to accept thirty day data retention for safety monitoring. Payward has not explained what code or system information will be submitted, how sensitive data will be separated or whether customer information falls outside the scanning process.

For now, the confirmed development is Payward’s admission to Project Glasswing and planned use of Claude Mythos 5. Whether the model improves the company’s security will depend on the quality of its findings, human verification and the speed of subsequent patches.

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Stripe has reportedly finalized an agreement to acquire AI model-routing platform OpenRouter for more than $7 billion, months after the startup was valued at $1.3 billion in its latest funding round.

Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Stripe had reached a deal to buy OpenRouter, citing people familiar with the matter, while TechCrunch later reported the transaction and noted that Stripe had not formally announced the acquisition.

A Stripe spokesperson declined to confirm the deal, telling TechCrunch that the company “does not comment on rumors or speculation.” The reported agreement therefore remains unconfirmed by Stripe or OpenRouter despite multiple reports that negotiations have concluded.

OpenRouter gives developers a single interface for accessing hundreds of artificial intelligence models from providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and DeepSeek. Developers can move workloads between models without rebuilding their integrations, while its system also manages billing, routing and fallback providers when services become unavailable.

The model has turned OpenRouter into a fast-growing layer between AI developers and the companies supplying the underlying models. OpenRouter currently lists more than 500 models and over 80 providers under its paid plans, according to its website.

CEO Alex Atallah has previously described the service as the “Stripe for AI,” comparing its single integration for multiple AI providers with Stripe’s role in simplifying access to payment infrastructure. Axios reported the comparison in July as Stripe was already discussing a possible takeover of the startup.

OpenRouter acquisition follows rapid growth in AI usage

OpenRouter’s reported sale price comes less than three months after a major financing round that placed a much lower value on the business.

The company announced in May that it had raised $113 million in Series B funding led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund. NVentures, ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Databricks Ventures, AMP PBC and Pace Capital participated alongside existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures.

TechCrunch reported at the time that the financing valued OpenRouter at about $1.3 billion on a post-money basis. A $40 million Series A completed in June 2025 had put its estimated valuation at about $547 million, meaning the reported Stripe agreement would value the startup at more than five times its May level.

Usage increased at a similar pace. OpenRouter said in May that weekly processing volume had reached 25 trillion tokens, equivalent to about 100 trillion tokens per month, compared with 5 trillion tokens per week six months earlier. The company described the increase as fivefold growth in processing volume.

OpenRouter was already serving more than 400 models across over 60 providers by June 2025, when Menlo Ventures said the platform had more than 2.5 million developers. The company has since expanded the number of models and providers available through its interface.

OpenRouter’s role in AI infrastructure has also extended into decentralized computing. A June io.net development covered by crypto.news identified the decentralized GPU network as one of the inference providers using OpenRouter, with io.net reporting more than 4 billion inference tokens processed each day at the time.

Stripe has expanded into AI agent payments

Stripe’s reported OpenRouter deal comes as the payments company builds infrastructure designed for transactions initiated by AI software.

During July talks over a possible acquisition, Axios cited an earlier Stripe statement saying that as tokens become more interchangeable with money, real-time streamed payments would form an important part of the company’s economic infrastructure for AI.

Stripe has already entered machine-to-machine payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol. As reported in May, Stripe launched x402 payments on Base that allow AI agents to pay for APIs, data and computing resources with USDC.

The protocol lets software agents make payments for online services without relying on the account and checkout systems built around human customers. Coinbase has positioned x402 as a payment standard for services including data access, API calls and other machine-readable products.

Stripe is also among the companies supporting the x402 Foundation. Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Circle and other technology and payments companies have backed the standard as autonomous software begins handling more commercial tasks.

By April, Coinbase had also launched Agentic.market, a service where AI agents can find and purchase online services through x402. Its agent services marketplace included providers covering inference, data, media, infrastructure and trading, with OpenAI among the named inference services available at launch.

A later Keyrock study found that AI agents had settled more than $73 million across 176 million transactions during a 12-month period, with USDC accounting for 98.6% of payments tracked in the report. The findings placed Stripe, Coinbase, Google, Visa and American Express among companies developing different approaches to machine payments.

Stripe could control model routing and transaction infrastructure

OpenRouter would give Stripe infrastructure at another part of an AI agent’s workflow if the reported transaction closes.

OpenRouter handles the model-selection side by giving applications access to different AI systems through one API. Its documentation says customers can use a unified interface and billing system while taking advantage of provider fallbacks, allowing requests to move between available providers when required.

Stripe, meanwhile, supplies payment infrastructure used by internet businesses and has been expanding its work around stablecoins, AI billing and autonomous payments. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that OpenRouter already used Stripe to accept payments from its customers, meaning the companies had an existing commercial relationship before acquisition talks emerged.

The Journal reported on July 23 that Stripe was discussing an OpenRouter purchase that could value the company at roughly $10 billion, although negotiations had not been completed and other companies had shown interest. The reported price under the finalized agreement is now more than $7 billion.

OpenRouter’s model-neutral approach remains central to its product

OpenRouter has built its service around giving developers access to competing AI models without requiring separate integrations with every provider.

Its current pricing page lists more than 500 models from over 80 providers, while features include automatic routing and the ability for customers to select preferred vendors. OpenRouter says underlying provider prices are passed through without a model-level markup, while the platform charges customers when they purchase credits.

The structure allows developers to select models based on factors including price, capabilities, and availability instead of committing an application to one AI company.

Researchers have also used OpenRouter’s traffic to study AI adoption. A study released this year by researchers from OpenRouter and Andreessen Horowitz analyzed more than 100 trillion tokens of real-world interactions across different models, tasks and locations, finding substantial use of open-weight models as well as increased agent-based inference.

Stripe has not disclosed whether OpenRouter would continue operating independently, become part of its existing developer products, or be integrated with its AI payment infrastructure if the reported acquisition is completed. No public announcement from either company has detailed product changes for OpenRouter users following the reported agreement.

The People’s Bank of China has added eight commercial banks to its digital yuan operating network, taking the number of e-CNY service operators to 30 as the central bank continues expanding access to its state-backed digital currency.

According to an Aug. 17 statement from the People’s Bank of China, Ping An Bank, Hengfeng Bank, China Bohai Bank, Bank of Shanghai, Bank of Hangzhou, Huishang Bank, Bank of Changsha and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank have been approved as banking institutions permitted to operate digital yuan services.

The eight banks have also been connected to the central bank-side digital renminbi system, putting the technical link needed for them to provide e-CNY services in place. Customer-facing operations will begin after each institution completes its remaining business and technical preparations, the PBOC said.

With the additions, the number of authorized digital yuan operators has risen from 22 to 30. The central bank said it will continue bringing more institutions into the system under market-oriented and rule-based principles while seeking an open and fair competitive environment for digital renminbi services.

Digital yuan operator network has expanded rapidly in 2026

The latest additions come just over four months after the PBOC approved another group of banks to provide digital yuan services.

On April 2, the central bank added 12 institutions, including China CITIC Bank, China Everbright Bank, Hua Xia Bank, China Minsheng Bank, China Guangfa Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Zheshang Bank, Bank of Ningbo, Bank of Jiangsu, Bank of Beijing, Bank of Nanjing and Bank of Suzhou.

That round increased the number of banking operators to 22, according to the PBOC announcement at the time. The newly approved institutions were similarly required to complete business and technical preparations before commencing digital yuan operations.

Adding another eight banks in August has taken the network to 30 operators within the same year, extending participation to institutions including national joint-stock banks and several city and regional commercial banks.

The PBOC tied the latest expansion to China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for 2026–2030, which calls for the steady development of the digital renminbi. The central bank said the additional operators are intended to improve access to e-CNY services and respond to demand for payment options that are secure, convenient and efficient.

China has been developing the digital yuan through a two-tier structure in which the central bank controls the underlying currency and infrastructure while approved commercial institutions handle services for users. Earlier PBOC documentation described commercial banks as a key part of the distribution model, allowing the central bank to use existing financial infrastructure instead of serving every retail user directly.

Digital yuan now operates more like a bank deposit

The expansion of the operator network follows a major change to how digital yuan balances are treated within China’s banking system.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, banks were allowed to pay interest on verified digital yuan wallets after the PBOC changed the framework governing e-CNY balances.

As crypto.news previously reported, verified digital yuan balances became eligible for interest under the same self-regulatory arrangements used to determine rates on conventional deposits. The balances also received protection under China’s national deposit insurance system.

Before the change, the e-CNY had primarily operated as a digital form of cash. Under the revised structure, commercial banks can manage eligible digital yuan balances within their asset-liability operations, while non-bank payment firms must keep customer reserve funds in digital yuan at a 100% reserve ratio, according to the PBOC framework.

Official figures cited when the changes were announced showed that the digital yuan had processed 3.48 billion transactions by November 2025. Chinese authorities have continued testing new uses for the currency after years of domestic pilot programs involving retail payments, public services and commercial transactions.

The addition of more commercial banks gives the PBOC another route to extend e-CNY services through institutions that already maintain customer relationships and payment infrastructure across different parts of China.

Cross-border digital yuan use has also advanced

Alongside domestic banking changes, Chinese institutions have continued testing digital yuan infrastructure for cross-border payments.

In July, the Shanghai branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and ICBC Singapore completed the first China-Singapore payment through the upgraded Digital Currency Express comprehensive settlement platform, known as CBETS.

The transaction covered nearly 10 million yuan in import shipping costs for a subsidiary of a centrally owned enterprise. Funds were settled entirely in digital renminbi and reached the recipient in Singapore on the same day, according to Mobile Payment Network.

CBETS was developed by the International Operation Center for the digital renminbi under the guidance of the PBOC’s Digital Currency Research Institute. The upgraded infrastructure combines earlier cross-border payment, blockchain service and digital asset systems while supporting ISO 20022 messaging standards used across international financial networks.

ICBC has also established digital yuan payment and collection links involving Singapore and Laos through the system, while its Inner Mongolia branch completed a 220 million yuan transfer to Hong Kong through the multilateral CBDC bridge, according to the same July report.

Guangdong is seeking more digital yuan payment trials

Regional authorities have also included e-CNY expansion in financial policy proposals for the 2026–2030 period.

Earlier in August, Guangdong published a draft development plan proposing more cross-border e-CNY trials within the China (Guangdong) Pilot Free Trade Zone. The consultation document called for additional digital yuan use cases alongside cross-border financial products, offshore finance, green finance, asset management and fintech testing.

The Guangdong proposal also called for larger cross-border digital yuan payment programs and further development of the Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect scheme. Public consultation on the draft is scheduled to remain open until Sept. 5.

According to the same proposal, financial institutions in the free trade zone could also be encouraged to develop cross-border supply chain finance products and intellectual property pledge financing, while authorities intend to continue trials involving cross-border credit asset transfers and multi-currency integrated accounts.

The upgraded international digital yuan platform had signed direct participant agreements with an initial group of 26 financial institutions by June, including ICBC Asia, Bank of China Hong Kong, Standard Chartered China and ICBC branches operating in Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Macau and Qatar.