San Francisco-based Anthropic, the AI company that has repeatedly warned that artificial intelligence could pose an existential risk to humanity, has confirmed it operates a wet lab for biological research, after reporters began asking questions about the effort.
Eric Kauderer-Abrams, Anthropic’s head of life sciences, confirmed the lab in an interview with Reuters, saying some experiments are conducted in-house and others through outside partners.
“We believe that to do biology, the final test is still, and will be for a while, in real lab work,” Kauderer-Abrams said. “We absolutely are doing that today.”
An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch the lab is focused on fundamental biology rather than drug discovery specifically. The company has separately said it wants to conduct preclinical work on rare diseases and other areas that traditional pharmaceutical companies do not find financially attractive.
A Growing Life Sciences Push
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said last week that AI could cure most major diseases within five to 10 years — a striking claim from a leader who has also warned repeatedly about AI’s dangers, including the risk of bioterrorism.
The company’s investment in life sciences has been building for months. Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio in April in a stock deal reportedly worth about $400 million, and Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan joined its board. Its Claude Science platform now draws on more than 60 databases covering genomics, proteomics and structural biology. This month, Anthropic launched a Life Sciences Verification Program for vetted researchers.
The company is also training its Claude model to direct robotic lab systems with limited human intervention, including protein and nucleic acid characterization, and released a Model Hardware Standard in August. Kauderer-Abrams described this work as “very early innings,” adding that humans remain involved for safety reasons.
Biosecurity Context
Anthropic has said it is not conducting coronavirus or gain-of-function research. Reuters separately reported that Anthropic had already identified examples where its own AI systems could potentially have been used toward biological-weapons development.
Researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic after warning that people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Anthropic’s alignment lead has put the odds of AI causing human extinction within 10 years above 10 percent, and Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development last weekend, again citing bioterrorism risk.
Investor Chamath Palihapitiya responded to news of the wet lab by writing: “The group behind such hits as ‘We’re All Going To Die’ and ‘Regulate Me Now’ are building a wet lab in SF. I do not recommend this.”
Pharmaceutical Partnerships
Anthropic already works with Novo Nordisk, Bristol Myers Squibb and Roche’s Genentech. Stephanie Walter of HyperFRAME Research said the arrangement “gives Anthropic a direct feedback loop and potentially valuable proprietary data for improving Claude.”
Kauderer-Abrams said Anthropic will not run human clinical trials for now, and its work will remain focused on early preclinical research, including areas drugmakers have avoided. “We’re not competing with pharma and biotech companies that make their business in bringing drugs to market,” he said.
Life sciences is now among Anthropic’s largest areas of investment by headcount and resources. Job postings seek expertise in lab procurement, biochemistry and automation, with one listing stating the goal of accelerating life-sciences research “by an order of magnitude.”
