In May, when Microsoft shipped patches for 137 vulnerabilities, the company stated the industry had reached a moment “where AI-powered vulnerability discovery stops being speculative and starts being an engineering problem.” Since then, successive record-breaking releases — 206 in June, followed by 622 in July — have seen the company explode past its annual record for vulnerabilities, of around 1,250. This month’s update features about five times the volume of patches Microsoft was shipping in a typical month before AI-assisted vulnerability discovery took hold. On the eve of that surge, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre warned that organizations needed to prepare for a new tempo in mitigating vulnerabilities. Three of this month’s flaws are zero-days.