Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: AI Alarm Hits Wall Street

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Bessent, Powell call urgent meeting with bank CEOs about Anthropic model risks. (00:13) Meta (META) pulls down law firm ads seeking clients over Facebook, Instagram addiction. (02:01) U.S. Postal Service seeks stamp price increase to 82 cents as costs rise. (02:43)

This is an abridged transcript.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are said to have summoned Wall Street leaders to an urgent meeting on concerns that the latest artificial intelligence model from Anthropic PBC (ANTHRO) will usher in an era of greater cyber risk.

Reports say they assembled the group at Treasury’s headquarters in Washington earlier this week to make sure banks are aware of possible risks raised by Anthropic’s Mythos and potential similar models and are taking precautions to defend their systems.

Bloomberg News, which first reported the matter on Thursday, said the ​CEOs of Citigroup (C), Morgan Stanley (MS), Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), and ⁠Goldman Sachs (GS) were present. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon was invited to the conversation but could not attend.

Anthropic on Tuesday released the model, dubbed Claude Mythos Preview, to a select group of partners, including Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft (MSFT), to give them a “head start on being able to secure vulnerabilities”.

Anthropic says the new model can find software vulnerabilities better than all but the most skilled humans.

Software companies nearly across the board were bleeding on Thursday, with cybersecurity names hit the hardest amid persistent fears of AI disruption and a shaky geopolitical backdrop.

Cybersecurity firms were hemorrhaging the most, led by Qualys (QLYS), which was down 12%. Cloudflare (NET) and Tenable (TENB) closed more than 8% lower and Zscaler (ZS) tumbled 11%.

Moreover, OpenAI (OPENAI) is also finalizing a new, powerful model with advanced cybersecurity capabilities that it plans to release only to a small set of companies, similar to Anthropic’s limited rollout of Mythos.

Meta (META) is taking down ads by law firms seeking clients on Instagram and Facebook to join lawsuits alleging harm from addictive platform design.

The crackdown comes after a wave of legal momentum against social media companies and recent court losses, including a $375M ruling in New Mexico and $6M damages award in Los Angeles against Meta (META) and Google (GOOG).

Meta (META) spokesperson Andy Stone stated the company is defending against thousands of cases in both state and federal courts ‌in California. “We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful,” Stone said in a statement.

The U.S. Postal Service proposed a new round of price increases which includes a hike in the cost of a First-Class Mail Forever stamp.

The changes, if approved, would take effect July 12 and raise mailing services prices by roughly 4.8 percent overall.

The price of sending a one-ounce letter would rise by four cents, from 78 to 82 cents, according to a filing submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission.

The cost to mail metered letters, a postcard and international letters would also go up.

The Postal Service is also seeking adjustments across a broader set of offerings, including periodicals, marketing mail, package services and certain special services products.

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Stock index futures are slightly higher as investors await the consumer price index report while monitoring U.S.-Iran ceasefire developments.

Crude oil is up 1% at $98. Bitcoin is little changed at $71,000 and Gold is down 0.2% at $4,750.

The FTSE 100 is up 0.4% and the DAX is up 0.5%.

The biggest movers for the day premarket: Tecnoglass (TGLS) -6% – Shares fell after the company updated its FY2026 outlook to reflect the impact of a newly implemented 10% U.S. tariff on aluminum window imports

Economic calendar: