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Thursday, October 29, 2026

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Labs · Thursday, October 29, 2026

Anthropic says it is giving free Claude credits to science groups

The File desk · Oct. 29, 2026, 6:35 a.m. ET

Partially confirmed1 primary sources

Status

Partially confirmed. Anthropic published the page on October 28, 2026. The partnerships and the count of 20 are the company's. The three lists name 18 groups. This desk did not open the partners' own pages.
  • Confirmed
    Anthropic's news page dated October 28, 2026, says it is expanding AI for Science and highlighting 20 partners.
  • Partially confirmed
    The three lists under that claim name 18 organizations and projects. The page also names HHMI Janelia and the Allen Institute as partners. Their own sites were not opened.
Anthropic said on Wednesday it is giving free Claude credits to scientific groups through its AI for Science program. Claude is the company's AI assistant. The credits are use of that system that the groups do not pay for, on Anthropic's account.1
The company said the program started in May 2025. It said scientists have used Claude to draft hypotheses, design experiments, and read data. Those uses are what Anthropic says it was told. This desk did not open a lab notebook.1
The page says Anthropic is highlighting 20 foundations, institutions, and research groups, and the three lists that follow name 18. The six funders include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the U.S. National Science Foundation. The six institutions include the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Francis Crick Institute. The six projects include FlyWire at Princeton and gnomAD at the Broad Institute.1
The page also names HHMI Janelia Research Campus and the Allen Institute as partners from the past year. It does not say whether those two are inside the count of 20.1
Why it matters (Estimate). Estimate. A researcher inside one of the named groups may get paid-for use of Claude that their lab does not have to budget. A reader who is not at those institutions does not get the credits from this page. The work Anthropic says it wants, open data and open software, would be the part that could reach someone outside the partnership, and the page says much of that is still ahead.
Anthropic said many of the projects are still early, and that some are meant to produce open data and open software. It did not say how large the credit is, or when it runs out.
How we know

Notes

  1. 1.Anthropic, “AI for Science expands to foundations and research institutions,” Oct. 28, 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/news/ai-for-science-expands-foundations-research-institutions “We’re highlighting 20 scientific foundations, institutions, and research groups from around the world that we’ve partnered with in an expansion of our AI for Science program, which gives free Claude credits to researchers working on high-impact scientific projects.” “We started the AI for Science program in May 2025.” Funders named: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Simons Foundation, Schmidt Sciences, Open Source for Science Fund, U.S. National Science Foundation, CAS. Institutions named: Space Telescope Science Institute, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Francis Crick Institute, Imperial College London Department of Life Sciences, EMBL, Gladstone Institutes. Projects named: FlyWire at Princeton, LEAP at Columbia, AstroPath at Johns Hopkins, gnomAD at the Broad Institute, Tau Ceti, Centre for Population Genomics. Also named as partners: HHMI Janelia Research Campus and the Allen Institute. The National Science Foundation is described on the page as a "$9 billion federal agency" that accounts for "about 25%" of federal support for basic research at U.S. colleges and universities. gnomAD is described as pooling DNA from "over 800,000 people." The Francis Crick Institute is described as having "more than 100 research groups." Those figures are Anthropic's descriptions.

What is still unknown or disputed

  • Whether the count of 20 includes HHMI Janelia and the Allen Institute. The page says 20. The three lists name 18.
  • The dollar value or the size of the credits. Not stated.
  • Confirmation from the partners. Their pages were not opened.

Primary sources

Every claim in this story is drawn from the documents below. If a fetch failed, that is recorded on the card.

  1. Source 1

    AI for Science expands to foundations and research institutions

    Anthropic · October 28, 2026

    Anthropic said on October 28, 2026, that it is highlighting 20 scientific partners and giving them free Claude credits.

    https://www.anthropic.com/news/ai-for-science-expands-foundations-research-institutions