Anthropic has quietly set up its own physical wet lab in the San Francisco Bay Area, marking the company's shift from purely computer simulations to real-world biological experiments focused on tackling rare and complex diseases.
Anthropic has quietly set up its own physical wet lab in the San Francisco Bay Area, marking the company's shift from purely computer simulations to real-world biological experiments focused on tackling rare and complex diseases.
Anthropic's head of Life Sciences, Eric Koderer-Abrams, confirmed the existence of the lab in a comment to Reuters , noting that the final test of any biological hypothesis is still actual laboratory work.
Anthropic is introducing physical automation, testing the ability of Claude's AI to control robotic testing rigs with minimal human intervention.
The company focuses on preclinical research and pathologies that the pharmaceutical industry considers financially unattractive or “incurable.” In particular, AI is being used to develop complex bispecific and trispecific antibodies.
Previously, Anthropic acquired the startup Coefficient Bio (for an estimated $400 million), released the Claude Science software, and brought Vas Narasimhan, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Novartis, to the board of directors.
The company emphasizes that it does not plan to conduct clinical trials or directly compete with pharmaceutical giants (such as Roche or Novo Nordisk, which are its customers), but only provides tools and fills niche gaps in medicine.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the project has personal meaning to him, as his father died of the disease years before a cure was available. The biomedical development is also an important attempt by the company to demonstrate the real societal benefits of AI amid concerns about mass layoffs and risks to humanity’s existence.
