Anthropic confirms a physical biology lab as it expands AI research

Anthropic is operating a wet biology lab in the San Francisco Bay Area, Reuters reported on September 18. Life-sciences head Eric Kauderer-Abrams confirmed physical experiments in company facilities and with external partners. A spokesperson clarified that the lab is not specifically for drug discovery. One unnamed source told Reuters that Anthropic wants Claude to direct robotic experiments with limited human intervention. Anthropic said human oversight remains essential and described lab automation as being at an early stage. Reuters did not establish fully autonomous operation; the diseases being targeted and progress remained unclear. Reuters 

Expanded access for biology research

Separately, Anthropic announced its Life Sciences Verification Program on September 17. Vetted organizations can obtain more permissive biology access. Project-specific High-risk Use grants remove safeguards that block life-sciences requests, while other safeguards remain. Such grants were available for Opus 5 and Sonnet 5; high-risk Mythos access remained limited to a small, additionally vetted group. Anthropic says the program uses offline monitoring against approved use cases, with 30-day data retention and organizational incident handling. It identifies compromised access, insider threats and dangerous agent actions as risks. These measures describe the company’s safeguards, not independent evidence of their effectiveness. Anthropic