Anthropic Announces Major Biological Discovery Made by Claude in Its Wet Lab

Anthropic has revealed that its wet biology lab in the Bay Area, where it deploys AI models to conduct physical experiments, has uncovered what it considers a major discovery: a previously unknown enzyme system with properties reminiscent of CRISPR. CRISPR, originally a natural bacterial defense mechanism against viral infections, has become a widely adopted tool for gene editing among researchers. Anthropic states that its newly identified system was hidden within the DNA of bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—and functions in a manner similar to CRISPR by executing operations such as cutting, copying, and pasting DNA. The broader scientific community will ultimately determine the scope and novelty of the finding. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei acknowledged on X that the work builds on earlier research, noting that a Stanford team had previously discovered a system resembling the one Claude identified. However, Amodei emphasized that the milestone was reached "mostly, though not entirely, by Claude." While the Bay Area lab was established only this spring, the research team noted that Claude achieved the discovery in just 21 hours of focused processing. The model examined biological data through approximately 950 agents that utilized 210 million tokens. The disclosure that Anthropic is actively carrying out biological experiments arrives at a sensitive moment, following public admissions by AI executives—including Amodei—that models have grown capable enough to warrant industry caution and formal safety-testing protocols.