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At the event “The Briefing: AI for Science” earlier this week, Anthropic announced Claude Science, a new “AI workbench for scientists” that pulls fragmented tools and datasets into one environment, and generates figures and visuals. Anthropic, already dominating the industry with its popular coding tools and powerful AI models, framed the launch around what it says is AI’s potential to “dramatically accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and the development of healthcare interventions,” and touted a long list of biotech and pharma customers already using Claude.

Anthropic also went a step further, saying it would develop drugs of its own. Head of life sciences Eric Kauderer-Abrams said the company will focus on discovering treatments for “neglected” diseases.

AI companies have been eager to court science and pharma customers — OpenAI, Amazon, Google, and others have their own life sciences tools and platforms. But Anthropic’s planned move is one of the most direct public attempts by a major frontier AI company to actually develop drugs itself. It puts it in the unusual position of selling software to other, potentially competing drugmakers. Anthropic joins a broader race that includes AI-first drug companies like Insilico, Google DeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs, biotech startups, and Big Pharma companies building or buying AI tools of their own.

Anthropic has provided very few specific details about what it hopes to accomplish in the drug development space. At the event, Kauderer-Abrams didn’t say what the company would do if it finds any promising drug candidates. Anthropic did not respond to The Verge’s requests for comment seeking more details, including what diseases it plans to target first and whether it would partner up with other companies for lab work, animal testing, clinical trials, or manufacturing.

Experts told The Verge that the uncertainty surrounding Anthropic’s plans reflects a broader uncertainty around the AI drug boom itself. “AI drug discovery” can mean many things. It “is a really broad term,” explained Namshik Han, a professor at the University of Cambridge and cofounder of AI biotech startup CardiaTec. AI is applied at “every single stage of drug discovery,” he said, from finding new compounds and improving them to supporting research, data analysis, clinical trials, and even manufacturing. Every major drug company will be using AI in some way, he said. Matthew Todd, a professor of drug discovery at University College London, echoed the sentiment that AI already pervades drug discovery and research, calling it a “catchall phrase” given its broad array of uses.