Anthropic operates a wet biology lab in the San Francisco Bay Area where its AI can test biology theories through physical experiments, the company's head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, confirmed this week. TechCrunch and The Next Web both reported the confirmation, citing Reuters as the outlet that first disclosed the lab's existence on September 18.
"We believe that to do biology, the final test is still and will be for a while in real lab work," Kauderer-Abrams said. The lab focuses on fundamental biology rather than drug discovery specifically, and Anthropic still routes some biological work to outside partners. Asked how far the company has gone toward letting its models run experiments autonomously, he said Anthropic is "in the very early innings."
Anthropic did not disclose the lab's size, staff count, opening date or biosafety level. The company also launched a Life Sciences Verification Program this week, giving vetted outside researchers access to its most capable models under added safeguards, according to both outlets.
The disclosure follows Anthropic's roughly $400 million acquisition of Coefficient Bio in April and sits alongside CEO Dario Amodei's public statements that he believes AI could cure most major diseases within 5 to 10 years. It also runs against the company's own researchers' repeated warnings about AI-enabled biological risk, a tension The Next Web noted directly.
A frontier AI lab running its own physical biology experiments, rather than just producing text about biology, is a meaningfully different claim than a chatbot answering science questions. It is also the kind of capability that makes the same lab's warnings about AI-enabled bioweapons harder to wave off as hypothetical.