Anthropic expands AI for Science program to institutions and foundations

Anthropic said it is expanding its AI for Science program beyond individual researchers to 20 scientific foundations, institutions and research groups, broadening a initiative that provides free Claude credits for high-impact scientific work. The company said the program is meant to widen access to AI tools for tasks such as hypothesis generation, experimental design, complex-data analysis and communicating findings.

Evidence and context

In its Oct. 28, 2026 announcement, Anthropic said the expansion includes partners that will distribute Claude credits to researchers and institutions working across fields including biology, medicine, physics, chemistry, climate science, mathematics and astronomy. The company said the program began in May 2025 and has already supported hundreds of projects.

Anthropic said the new science funders and societies include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Simons Foundation, Schmidt Sciences, Open Source for Science Fund at Renaissance Philanthropy, the U.S. National Science Foundation and CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society. It said institutional partners include the Space Telescope Science Institute, Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Francis Crick Institute, Imperial College London’s Department of Life Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and Gladstone Institutes.

The company also cited project-level support for FlyWire at Princeton University, LEAP at Columbia University, AstroPath at Johns Hopkins University, gnomAD at the Broad Institute, Tau Ceti and the Centre for Population Genomics. Anthropic said these collaborations are intended to produce public goods such as open datasets, open-source software, open standards and shared libraries.

Anthropic also pointed to earlier work with HHMI Janelia Research Campus on the Model Hardware Standard, which it described as a shared specification for AI agents to safely operate lab instruments and which it said is in research preview. The company said it continues to support the Allen Institute, where AI agents are being used to analyze large datasets in less time than manual methods.

The announcement builds on Anthropic’s January 2026 update on healthcare and life sciences and follows a separate Oct. 27, 2026 research update on drug development. The company did not quantify the size of the credits being allocated to the newly announced partners or provide a timeline for the next phase of the program.