BofA CEO Brian Moynihan: 1,000 contractors hired to patch Mythos-exposed flaws

Bank of America's scramble followed the April release of Anthropic's Mythos to a limited set of banks, technology firms and government agencies. The bank's response was to surge manpower in the second quarter using both employees and outside personnel, and those 1,000 contractors are still on the payroll today atop the 3,000 people already working in that area.

The cost has landed in the same quarter as the bank's third-quarter earnings release. Moynihan told analysts the bank spent a "couple hundred million plus" on software remediation and regulatory issues tied to anti-money-laundering compliance. Even as shares fell as much as 8% on the day he spoke to CNBC, he framed the increase as temporary, saying the bank expects remediation costs to decline over time.

Running alongside that defensive spending is the other side of AI at the bank. Moynihan said roughly 130 internal AI projects are expected to lift savings from $300 million this year to $700 million in 2027. He also said head count fell by about 3,400 employees over the past year as the firm cut roughly 5% of managers, though it is unclear how much of that reduction is attributable to AI.