Anthropic has established a biology research lab in the San Francisco Bay Area to conduct physical experiments, according to Reuters. Eric Kauderer-Abrams, the company's Head of Life Sciences, has confirmed the lab's existence to the news organization. "We believe that to do biology, the final test is still and will be for a while in real lab work," he said. "We absolutely are doing that today..." He also said that while Anthropic is doing lab work in-house, it's also working with external partners when it makes sense.

At an event for pharmaceutical executives, biotech founders, and researchers on Tuesday, Anthropic announced Claude Science, a major new product intended to support scientific research in the same way that Claude Code supports software engineering. Like Claude Code, Claude Science can autonomously carry out meaningful work when given concise, high-level instructions, and it has access to tools that make it particularly useful for research in computational biology and drug development. Along with launching and previewing Claude Science, which is now available to all paid Claude subscribers, Anthropic also announced that it will be using the product to pursue some of its own research into drugs for rare, neglected diseases. This is not Anthropic's first foray into AI for science. In October, the company released plug-ins that help Claude make use of scientific software and databases under the heading "Claude for Life Sciences." But unlike this earlier release, Claude Science is a full-featured, standalone product. Anthropic's decision to elevate Claude Science to the same rank as Claude Code and Claude Cowork indicates that the company is taking AI's scientific applications very seriously--or at least wants to give the impression that it is.