Anthropic opens AI-powered wet lab in San Francisco Bay Area

Anthropic's new Bay Area wet lab arrives alongside a separate life sciences effort. In June, the company launched an effort to develop drugs for diseases the pharmaceutical sector isn't prioritizing — but the new facility is described by a spokesperson as "not for drug discovery specifically," which points to broader biology work.

The lab's use of Claude to control robots hints at the Model Hardware Standard, or MHS, a protocol that lets Claude control lab equipment and even spot and fix experiment errors. MHS was developed with HHMI, a Virginia-based medical research center, and in August Anthropic said the institute is among several organizations testing MHS-powered Claude workflows for lab equipment. That matters because mapping a new biological phenomenon usually requires several instruments to run in a specific order, with researchers manually writing scripts to coordinate them.

The stakes seem to hinge on how Anthropic positions itself relative to established drugmakers. The company told Reuters it is not "competing with pharma and biotech companies," and it plans to entrust some lab work to external partners. Since developing a new drug takes billions of dollars and more than a decade, offloading part of that work could simplify Anthropic's push — though whether that approach produces results outside drug discovery remains to be seen.