Sellitto at the IMF: Claude could lead 80–90% of model building next year
Partly confirmed
The takeaway
A post summarising this as “80-90% of frontier model training” reached ~586k views on X. He also gave Project Glasswing figures (about 130,000 vulnerabilities found, ~30,000 critical or severe).
Status
- Claim
Partly confirmed
- Our reporting
- Medium confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 17 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra169 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5108 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon199 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7138 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 108 days before it.
Key facts
- Venue: IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings, Bangkok, session ‘Artificial Intelligence and Escalating Cyber Risks: Implications for Macroeconomic and Financial Stability’, Fri Oct 16, 2026, 4:15–5:15 pm; panelists an IMF Deputy Managing Director, Marlene Amstad (FINMA), Andrea Maechler (BIS), Paulo Picchetti (Central Bank of Brazil), Michael Sellitto (listed by the IMF as Head of Global Affairs, Anthropic)
- Claim (from the IMF video, his opening remarks): share of building the next-generation model led by Claude: 0% at the start of 2026, 3% in April, 26% in August; ‘we can project out … sometime next year, that could be 80%, 90%’. The 26% (August) figure matches Anthropic’s Sept 17 R&D Automation Index; the 80–90% projection was new to us
- He framed it as a repeat of coding: ~0% of Anthropic code written by Claude in early 2025, ~50% by August 2025, ‘80 to 90%’ by end-2025; ‘humans do not do well with exponentials’
- Glasswing (as stated on the panel): in the ~90-day project, Anthropic and partners found ‘like 130,000 vulnerabilities’, about 30,000 critical or severe, ‘the vast majority are probably still unpatched today’; Glasswing has ended and a cyber verification program with KYC tiers replaced it
- Misuse: breaches that took teams weeks or months ‘can be done by a single person, in some case in hours’; attackers use AI ‘across the entire kill chain’. Asked misuse vs misalignment: Anthropic should be more concerned about alignment, everyone else about basic cyber misuse for now
- Policy: ‘there are going to need to be regulations, uh, with teeth’ for catastrophic risks; ‘we really need to sprint over the next 12 months’ while defenders still have a window
- Reach: MTS (@MTSlive) post ‘Anthropic projects Claude could lead 80-90% of frontier model training by next year, up from 3% in April’ ~586k views (fxtwitter, Oct 17); Anthropic’s Santi Ruiz quoted it with the staff poll (median: AI does 80% of building models by end-2027). The IMF video had ~2.9k views on Oct 17
What happened
Sellitto opened the IMF cyber-risk panel with two “pace of change” anecdotes. The first was code: Claude went from writing almost none of Anthropic’s code to about half after a model release in August 2025, and 80–90% by the end of 2025. The second was model building: the share of “training the next-generation model” led by Claude rose from 0% at the start of 2026 to 3% in April and 26% in August, and “sometime next year, that could be 80%, 90%”. He argued that once models find the algorithmic improvements, progress compounds and “this pace of change may dramatically increase in the next year”. The rest of his remarks covered Mythos and Glasswing, AI-enabled attacks and cyber hygiene, and the auditors (Accenture, METR) Anthropic is embedding.
On X the remark spread as “80-90% of frontier model training by next year”. Sellitto said “could”, tied it to an Anthropic blog post, and spoke of the share of the process “led by Claude”, the same measure as the 26% in Anthropic’s September R&D Automation Index.
Sourcing note: the quotes here come from a machine transcription (Gemini) of the IMF’s YouTube recording, made on Oct 17; the figures are consistent with the X summaries and Crypto Briefing, but the exact wording has not been checked against an official transcript. Anthropic’s own pages give Sellitto’s title as Head of APAC Policy (Singapore office, Oct 14); the IMF lists him as Head of Global Affairs.
Why it matters
It is the first figure from an Anthropic official for how much of its next model’s development Claude may lead within a year, given to central bankers and finance ministers on the day before Jack Clark’s IMF lecture on the singularity. It is a projection, not a measurement, and “led by Claude” depends on Anthropic’s own definition.
Sources
5 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
5 sources: 1 primary, 1 press, 3 reactions
Primary
- IMF: session page, AI and Cyber Risks (panelists)imf.org, official
Press
- Crypto Briefing: Anthropic projects Claude will lead 80-90% of frontier model training by 2027 (Oct 16)cryptobriefing.com, press
Reactions
- IMF on YouTube: Artificial Intelligence and Escalating Cyber Risks (Oct 16, 2026)youtube.com, video
- MTS on X: Sellitto told the IMF Claude could lead 80-90% of frontier model training by next year (~586k views)x.com, discussion
- Santi Ruiz on X: internal poll, 80% of building models by end-2027x.com, discussion
Changes
- Filed (IMF session page and video read)