On the 30th (local time), Anthropic unveiled its automated drug discovery software (SW), “Claude Science,” at an event in San Francisco, United States. The company has entered the artificial intelligence (AI) drug development competition, a field where Google and OpenAI have taken an early lead. With Anthropic’s initial public offering (IPO) expected as early as this fall, this move into the drug development market is anticipated to become a new growth driver for expanding its business-to-business (B2B) revenue.

Eric Kutherer-Abrams, head of life sciences at Anthropic, who took the stage as presenter, stated, “We will first target ‘neglected diseases’ that large pharmaceutical companies have shunned for profitability reasons.” Claude Science is a tool that automates biological and chemical experiment processes, such as protein structure prediction, and links more than 60 scientific databases into a single system, enabling easy handling of complex, multi-step research.

AI-driven drug development has already emerged as the next major battleground for global technology companies. Isomorphic Labs, a Google DeepMind subsidiary, is preparing to move a drug candidate designed with its proprietary AI into clinical trials, while OpenAI joined the competition in April by releasing a biology-specialized model.

The market reacted sharply immediately after Anthropic’s announcement. Shares of Schrödinger, which identifies drug candidates through physics-based simulation, at one point plunged 8.3%, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which combines AI with automated robotic laboratories to analyze biological data, also deepened its intraday losses before partially recovering.

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