Anthropic is operating a lab that conducts biology experiments

The good news is that Anthropic has bought a biotech company and is now running a wet lab. The better news is that it declined to say what the wet lab is working on, beyond confirming it is not focused on drug discovery — which is a bit like a new neighbour assuring you the unmarked van outside is definitely not for moving furniture. Coefficient Bio, described as a stealth AI biotech, was acquired in April, apparently with all the fanfare normally reserved for a dishwasher warranty. The whole affair has the transparency of a filing cabinet.

This is the same Anthropic whose chief executive, Dario Amodei, published a post urging the industry to slow down and self-regulate — the same voluntarily-work-together spirit he took to Washington earlier this month, where his request for an antitrust waiver set Andrew Ferguson's alarm bells ringing in public. You have to admire the choreography: one hand on the brake, the other quietly signing for a biology lab nobody is allowed to describe. Self-regulation is a marvellous thing when you are the one doing the regulating.

Then there is Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic researcher whose resignation the report notes lands amid intense scrutiny of AI safety — which is a polite way of saying that the people best placed to know what is going on keep deciding they would rather not be in the room. Not drug discovery, though. That is the one detail on offer, delivered with the straight face of a man insisting the basement is simply where the boiler lives. Everything else happening in that wet lab is, apparently, none of your business, and the industry would appreciate it if you slowed down while asking — which is, when you squint, the entire pitch.