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AI for Science Expands to Foundations and Research Institutions, Bringing Claude Credits to More Labs!

Anthropic News ★★ View Markdown
#anthropic#ai#science

Hi everyone, it's Shii-chan! I found news that science fans will love. The Claude research support program just got much bigger!

Anthropic News anthropic.com

What was announced?

Anthropic's News page announced an expansion of its "AI for Science" program (published October 28, 2026). The program gives free Claude credits to researchers working on high-impact scientific projects.

The big change this time: organizations such as foundations and research institutions are joining as partners, not just individual researchers.

Why it matters

The program started in May 2025 with the goal of speeding up scientific progress and making AI tools and resources easier for researchers to access.

  • A discounted Team plan for scientists was also launched
  • Hundreds of projects have been supported across biology, medicine, physics, chemistry, climate science, and mathematics
  • Researchers use Claude to generate hypotheses, design experiments, analyze data, and communicate findings

Support used to center on individual scientists. Now it can reach further through institutions and foundations.

What changes

With organizations that fund or conduct research joining, the way support reaches people changes.

  • Foundations and societies can distribute Claude credits to the researchers they fund
  • Research institutions can use credits internally
  • Research projects can receive credits directly

Many projects are also expected to produce public goods: open datasets, open-source software, open standards, and shared libraries.

Dive Deep

The page says 20 partners but lists 18. They fall into three groups.

Funders and societies (distributing credits to researchers)

  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: founded in 1934; supports STEM and economics research and education
  • Simons Foundation: supports mathematics and basic sciences through grants and the Flatiron Institute
  • Schmidt Sciences: founded in 2024 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt; prioritizes AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, and space
  • Open Source for Science Fund (Renaissance Philanthropy): a time-bound fund that sustains and evolves the open-source software stack behind science
  • US National Science Foundation: a roughly $9 billion federal agency established by Congress in 1950, providing about 25% of federal basic research support at US colleges and universities
  • CAS (a division of the American Chemical Society): has indexed published chemistry for over a century and maintains CAS REGISTRY, the standard system for identifying chemical substances

Institutions (using credits internally)

  • Space Telescope Science Institute: runs science operations for Hubble, James Webb, and Roman
  • Wellcome Sanger Institute: a major genomics center for human genetics, biodiversity, and drug development
  • The Francis Crick Institute: based in London, with more than 100 research groups
  • Imperial College London, Department of Life Sciences: focused on health, disease, and climate resilience
  • EMBL: Europe's intergovernmental life sciences lab with six sites; EMBL-EBI hosts Ensembl, the Protein Data Bank in Europe, and Europe PMC
  • Gladstone Institutes: an independent biomedical institute in San Francisco

Research projects (receiving credits directly)

  • FlyWire (Princeton University): produced the first complete wiring map of an adult fruit fly brain
  • LEAP (Columbia University): combines machine learning and physics to improve climate models for clouds, oceans, and land
  • AstroPath (Johns Hopkins University): applies astronomical survey calibration methods to image tumors cell by cell
  • gnomAD (Broad Institute): an open reference of human genetic variation pooling DNA data from over 800,000 people
  • Tau Ceti: an open, community-driven shared library of autoformalized mathematics in Lean
  • Centre for Population Genomics (Australia): a joint initiative of the Garvan Institute and Murdoch Children's Research Institute

Two to watch

With HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Anthropic co-developed the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a shared specification that lets AI agents safely operate lab instruments. It is currently in research preview.

The Allen Institute, known for large open datasets and tools for brain, cell, and immune research, is building teams of AI agents to analyze data. The page says this turns months of manual work into hours.

Wrap-up

  • AI for Science is expanding from individual researchers to foundations and institutions
  • Foundations and societies distribute Claude credits, institutions use them internally, and projects receive them directly
  • Efforts like MHS with Janelia (research preview) show AI moving toward operating lab instruments
  • Many collaborations are early; Anthropic plans to share their impact and add more partners worldwide

If you work in genomics, astronomy, climate science, or math, or in research funding, this one is worth a look!

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