Anthropic to develop its own (additional) drugs
Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude model, announced plans to develop its own drugs, marking a significant expansion into AI-driven drug discovery and development.
Background
Anthropic is the AI company behind Claude, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers. It has positioned itself as the "safety-first" AI lab, prioritizing alignment and responsible development. This article reports that Anthropic is moving beyond selling AI tools to biotech partners and will now develop its own drugs internally — a significant vertical integration play that puts it in direct competition with its own customers (pharma companies using Claude for R&D). The move signals that Anthropic sees drug discovery not just as an application for its AI, but as a potentially massive standalone business. It follows a broader trend of AI labs (like Google's DeepMind with AlphaFold) expanding into scientific discovery rather than just language models.