Anthropic is operating a lab that conducts biology experiments

Anthropic is operating a lab that conducts biology experiments | TechCrunch

Disrupt 2026: OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, and more take over 6 industry stages. 25% off tickets now

Back by popular demand: Save up to $300 on Disrupt

Image Credits:Xero (opens in a new window)

Anthropic is operating a lab that conducts biology experiments

4:13 PM PDT · September 18, 2026

Anthropic has a wet biology lab in the Bay Area where it can use its AI models to run physical experiments, it has confirmed to TechCrunch.

AI leaders have been promising that AI is the key to curing human disease. Dario Amodei opined just last week: I believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years. To do that, an LLM would have to have methods to test its theories in real life.

We believe that to do biology, the final test is still, and will be for a while, in real lab work, Anthropics head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, told Reuters. We absolutely are doing that today. He added that the lab operates like most biotech labs: Anthropic conducts some research there while also working with external partners.

This news probably shouldnt be shocking. Anthropic bought Coefficient Bio, a stealth AI biotech, in April.

While Anthropic declined to give specifics on what the wet lab is working on, it did say the main focus was fundamental biology, not drug discovery.

Anthropic doesnt want to give the appearance of competing with the pharma industry, where it has numerous major customers and partners (e.g., it just announced a deal to work with Novo Nordisk on joint drug discovery). Anthropic has already faced backlash for launching products perceived to compete with those of its customers.

To that end, Anthropic also launched a Life Sciences Verification Program this week, to give vetted bio researchers access to its most powerful models. It has also published recent reports on some of the research its doing to support drug discovery. This includes one report on accelerating protein design and one on uplifting bimolecular modeling.

But the world is still reeling from the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who warned that the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. Anthropic’s own alignment lead gave the odds at greater than 10% that AI could exterminate humanity within the next decade.

The fervor has grown so intense that CEO Dario Amodei published a post last weekend calling on the industry to slow down and institute self-regulation. He has repeatedly called bioterrorism one of AIs biggest risks.

The juxtaposition of these dire warnings and the wet lab has not gone unnoticed in the tech industry. As investor and AI coding startup founder Chamath Palihapitiya posted on X, somewhat tongue in cheek: 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.

AI, Anthropic, Biotech & Health

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Julie Bort is the Startups/Venture Desk editor for TechCrunch.

You can contact or verify outreach from Julie by emailing julie.bort@techcrunch.com or via @Julie188 on X.

Last day to book an exhibit table is September 18. Don’t miss out on high-impact leads, investor access, and a brand spotlight in Disrupt’s Expo Hall.

A new kind of AI model from a ChatGPT inventor is thrilling developers

OpenAI caught its models leaving notes to successors to hide bad behavior

Microsoft exec called AI scraping ‘the largest theft of labor in human history, new unredacted filings reveal

Clean tech startup Fluxnium found a way to tap 50,000 years worth of nuclear fuel

Salesforce and Nvidias new reasoning model is everything the AI labs should fear

Jensen Huang took a call from Trump, and showed off something else, too

The 9 buzziest startups from Y Combinator’s latest Demo Day, according to VCs