SoftBank launches AI-powered cybersecurity service to automatically detect and patch system vulnerabilities, after discovering 10,500 flaws in its own infrastructure.

What happened: SoftBank began offering Patching as a Service (PaaS) on June 16, a cybersecurity solution that uses OpenAI's frontier AI models—including GPT-5.5-Cyber and an agent called Daybreak—to identify and repair system vulnerabilities. The service targets critical infrastructure companies; SoftBank tested it internally on 700 of its own systems (out of approximately 1,800 total) and uncovered 10,500 vulnerabilities, roughly 4,000 of which require urgent patching.

Why it matters: Frontier AI models have begun exposing new system vulnerabilities at scale, creating what SoftBank's CEO framed as an acute security risk. Traditional cyberattacks involved human effort; AI-powered attacks can probe systems far more rapidly. SoftBank plans to scale from 50 skilled technicians to 1,000 to help critical infrastructure companies deploy these defenses before open-source equivalents emerge—a window SoftBank estimates could be as short as 5 months based on historical timelines for open models.

What to watch: SoftBank is offering the service free (up to 2 million lines of code) to critical infrastructure companies attending its launch event, with the goal of rolling out across approximately 3,000 critical infrastructure firms by year-end. The iterative repair process is notable: even after patches are applied and new scans run, additional vulnerabilities continue to surface, suggesting remediation may be ongoing rather than conclusive.