XBOW: $250,000 Chrome bug bounty for an exploit built by AI agents and one researcher

XBOW's announcement says its platform earned a $250,000 reward from Google's Chrome Vulnerability Reward Program, the first full-chain Chrome award under Google's 2026 rules, and that XBOW's AI agents and one security researcher worked together to build the chain over six days, at an estimated $40,000 of compute. XBOW also calls this the first such award granted to an autonomous offensive security platform. The Hacker News says XBOW drew a line between the two: the agents searched Chrome's source code, tested ideas, built proofs of concept and wrote the first drafts of the exploit, while the researchers chose the targets, supplied context, challenged the agents' results and decided which pieces to join. One researcher, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, built the awarded chain with the agents. The Hacker News says that run was Sunday 2 Aug through Friday 7 Aug 2026 and followed months of earlier work: the challenge was set at a January staff meeting, and XBOW's first full Chrome chain took two months. XBOW says it will use the award money to fund its continued efforts to secure NGOs using XBOW's technology. The amount is XBOW's own figure. The Hacker News says Google confirmed the three bugs, fixed them, and paid XBOW its top $250,000 reward. No Google page is among the sources. A one-off bounty, not recurring revenue.