GOOGLE PAID $250,000 FOR IT — THE WHOLE HEIST COST $40,000 IN AI COMPUTE

Google paid XBOW $250,000 through its Chrome Vulnerability Reward Program for the full-chain exploit, the first such award under Google's updated 2026 rules and the first paid to an autonomous offensive security platform. The exploit could have affected more than a billion Chrome users on Windows.

XBOW estimated the work cost about $40,000 in AI compute. The chain was built between August 2 and August 7 by a small team working with agents running OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, after an earlier first full chain had taken two months. Google confirmed and patched all three vulnerabilities, and XBOW said the flaws were not used against Chrome users.