Anthropic moves into drug discovery, and buys a one-person biotech run with Claude

Anthropic published early results from six pharma and biotech partners (BigHat Biosciences, Bristol Myers Squibb, Divergence Labs, Enveda, Generate Biomedicines and The Column Group). Examples: Divergence produced about 35,000 antibody designs in roughly a month, largely autonomously, and Enveda says Claude caught all 11 issues its reviewers found in 1,061 pages of manufacturing documents plus 7 they missed, cutting review time by 89%. These are the partners' own figures and mostly early lab (preclinical) work, as Anthropic itself says. It also acquired Mithril Medicine, where founder Cody Tranbarger used Claude to run contracts, logistics and experiments with 11 outside labs, going from idea to promising mouse results in under 18 months; human trials could come 'as soon as late 2028'.

Why it mattersMithril is the clearest example yet of one person plus an AI coordinating many outside suppliers. The same pattern fits an agency or consultancy managing freelancers, vendors and paperwork: start by letting Claude track contracts and deadlines for one project.

How we knowCompany figures are labelled as their own claims; anything we couldn't verify is labelled as a report or a claim.