Anthropic launches AI drug discovery program

- Anthropic is the San Francisco-based AI company behind the Claude family of large language models, founded by former OpenAI researchers. It is a direct competitor to OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Google (Gemini). - This announcement marks Anthropic's first major push into life sciences, specifically drug discovery. Until now, the company has focused on general-purpose AI assistants and enterprise tools. - AI-driven drug discovery is a fast-growing field: companies like Isomorphic Labs (DeepMind's spinout) and Recursion Pharmaceuticals use AI to predict molecular behavior and speed up the search for new medicines, which traditionally takes a decade or more. - The program likely involves using Claude to analyze scientific literature, predict protein structures, or design candidate molecules — tasks that have previously been the domain of specialized models like AlphaFold. - The move signals Anthropic's ambition to compete not just on general benchmarks but on high-value, domain-specific scientific applications that could attract pharma partnerships and funding.