Anthropic confirms a Bay Area biology wet lab

Reuters reported exclusively on September 18 that Anthropic has set up a wet lab in the San Francisco Bay Area to run physical biology experiments rather than only computer evaluations, a step two people familiar with the matter said goes beyond in-silico work. Head of life sciences Eric Kauderer-Abrams confirmed the lab to Reuters, saying Anthropic is doing some of that work in its own facilities and some with external partners, and that it is still in the very early innings of using AI to automate lab execution. A spokesperson later said the facility is not specifically for drug discovery, and Kauderer-Abrams said Anthropic is not running clinical trials for now so it is not competing with pharma companies that take drugs to market.