Reuters reported on September 18 2026 that Anthropic has set up a wet lab in the San Francisco Bay Area, sourced initially to two people familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity. Critically, the company then confirmed it on the record: Anthropic's head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, confirmed the startup's wet lab, saying "We believe that to do biology, the final test is still and will be for a while in real lab work," and adding "We absolutely are doing that today" , describing the approach as split between its own facilities and external partners. A spokesperson later clarified that Anthropic's lab is not for drug discovery specifically, declining to elaborate.

The surrounding drug-science push is not a leak at all. It was publicly announced months earlier: Anthropic is starting an internal drug discovery program as part of an effort to develop AI tools designed for drugmakers, focused on "neglected" diseases, announced alongside Claude Science, a product designed for drugmakers.

The initial focus is rare and "neglected" diseases, and executives said this focus lets the company avoid competing directly with its pharmaceutical customers while gaining insight into what the industry needs.

Anthropic's own hiring channel independently corroborates in-house bench work. Its official job board states that the Life Sciences team "combines cutting-edge AI with hands-on biological research," and that it is hiring Research Associates, "early-career bench scientists who will join a small team to help establish our biology research program." The listed requirements are wet-lab skills, including protein expression and purification, mammalian cell culture including transfection and stable line maintenance, enzyme kinetics or quantitative biochemical assays, and next-generation sequencing library preparation . Reuters separately cited hiring signals: a LinkedIn post for a leader to ramp up procurement and other operations, a role seeking an expert on "protein and nucleic acid characterization," and a third listing reading "Our goal is to speed up progress in the life sciences by an order of magnitude."

On automation, Anthropic's own channel confirms the adjacent infrastructure work: Danaher and Anthropic are exploring how MHS-supported capabilities could enable smart instruments and autonomous laboratories to scale biomedical research . Reuters reported the ambition goes further, that the startup wants to push how its Claude AI can direct robotic units to carry out science experiments with limited human intervention , while Anthropic's spokesperson said human oversight and involvement are essential for safety, and Kauderer-Abrams said "We're in the very early innings of using AI to automate the execution of lab work."

Facility details were withheld. Anthropic provided no information about the lab's size, number of staff, opening date, or biosafety level, the last of which would most indicate the kind of work involved.

The precise diseases Anthropic is addressing and its progress remain unclear, and it has not taken on human trials.

Kauderer-Abrams said Anthropic has set a boundary that it is not running clinical trials for now, stating "We're not competing with pharma and biotech companies that make their business in bringing drugs to market."