Anthropic Confirms It Runs a Wet Biology Lab in the Bay Area

Anthropic has confirmed to TechCrunch that it operates a wet biology lab in the Bay Area, where its AI models can be used to run physical experiments.

The company's head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, told Reuters that real lab work remains the final test for doing biology, and that Anthropic is doing that today. He said the lab runs much like most biotech labs, with Anthropic conducting some research itself while also working with outside partners.

Anthropic declined to say exactly what the lab is working on, but said its main focus is fundamental biology rather than drug discovery. The company does not want to appear to be competing with the pharmaceutical industry, where it has many customers and partners, including a recently announced drug discovery deal with Novo Nordisk. Anthropic has previously drawn criticism for launching products seen as competing with its customers.

The company also launched a Life Sciences Verification Program this week, giving vetted bio researchers access to its most powerful models, and has published reports on research supporting drug discovery, including work on accelerating protein design and improving bimolecular modeling.

The lab's existence has drawn attention given Anthropic's own warnings about AI risk. Researcher Jacob Coxon resigned with a warning that the people building AI believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade, and the company's alignment lead put the odds of AI exterminating humanity within a decade at greater than 10%. CEO Dario Amodei published a post last weekend urging the industry to slow down and self-regulate, and has repeatedly named bioterrorism as one of AI's biggest risks. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya joked on X about the contrast between those warnings and the new lab.

Source: TechCrunch