Claude Opens 10,000 Free Seats for Scientists, Expanding AI for Science!

Hi, I'm Shii-chan! Today I found some generous news from Anthropic for everyone doing scientific research. It's about making Claude much easier for scientists everywhere to use, so let's dive in!

Anthropic News anthropic.com

What was announced?

Anthropic's News page just announced an expansion of support for scientists. There are two main pieces:

• A new Claude team plan for scientists that opens 10,000 seats worldwide, free or discounted, for one year
• An expanded AI for Science program that now supports research fields beyond biology

Here's how the new plan breaks down:

• Standard seats: free
• Premium seats (5x usage limits): $15 per month

Anthropic says it plans to grow well beyond these initial 10,000 seats over the coming months.

The story so far

In June, Anthropic launched Claude Science, a product that brings together the tools researchers use most, produces auditable artifacts, and gives flexible access to compute. Alongside it, the AI for Science program has been quietly growing, offering free credits to researchers on high-impact projects.

Until now, though, AI for Science mostly supported scientists doing biological research, and there wasn't really a dedicated, discounted way for whole labs to get onto Claude together.

What changes

With this announcement, it gets a lot easier for scientists to start using Claude.

• If you're a principal investigator (or equivalent) at an academic or nonprofit institution, you can register through a verification form and then add your lab's researchers to the plan
• Beyond biology, researchers working on ambitious, compute-heavy projects, the kind that led to progress on the Riemann zeta function and Claude's work on protein design, can now more easily access AI for Science credits
• If your lab uses up its allotted credits and needs more than the standard or premium plans provide, you can apply to AI for Science for up to $50,000 in credits per project, open to any researcher, not just PIs

By combining subscriptions, credits, and Claude Science, Anthropic says it wants to meaningfully speed up scientific discovery.

Dive Deep

Let's look a bit closer at how registration works and what's still restricted.

To register, you fill out a verification form confirming you're a PI (or equivalent) at an academic or nonprofit institution. Once verified, you can add your lab's researchers to the plan.

There are also some model access limits worth knowing about:

• Researchers in biology and chemistry are, for now, limited to Opus-class models
• Fable-class models will continue to block professional biology and drug-development queries because of dual-use risks
• For the more advanced Mythos-class models, Anthropic is partnering with the US government to build an access program for life sciences professionals, and says it has already enrolled its first participants, with more access planned soon

In other words, the more capable the model, the more carefully Anthropic is gating access in the life sciences.

Wrap-up

Here's the quick recap:

• Claude team plan for scientists: 10,000 seats worldwide, free or $15/month, for one year (standard seats free, premium seats with 5x usage limits at $15/month)
• AI for Science program: now open to fields beyond biology, with up to $50,000 in credits per project
• Model access: biology/chemistry researchers get Opus-class for now, Fable-class keeps blocking risky queries, and Mythos-class is opening gradually through a government partnership

If you're at a university or research institute and budget has been the thing holding you back from really using Claude, this one's for you!