AI: Anthropic and OpenAI Take Their Rivalry to the Field of Scientific Research

Anthropic and OpenAI have just opened a new front in their AI race: scientific research. The two Silicon Valley giants released their tools on the same day, each with a radically different approach.

Claude Science: an AI laboratory for researchers

On Tuesday, June 30, 2026, Anthropic unveils Claude Science just days after the launch of Fable 5. It is an AI application connected to over 60 scientific databases covering:

• genomics;
• proteomics;
• cheminformatics.

Each result produced remains traceable back to the source code that generated it.

The goal is clear: to automate the analysis of complex biological data while guaranteeing total transparency, since each result is auditable and traced back to its original code. Initial tests conducted with the Allen Institute show that scientific literature analyses that once took up to two years have been dramatically condensed.

GeneBench-Pro: OpenAI tests the limits of AI

On its side, OpenAI has released GeneBench-Pro. In April, it launched a ChatGPT specifically designed for doctors. GeneBench-Pro is a benchmark of 129 problems designed to evaluate the ability of AIs to make decisions in complex biological data.

OpenAI’s best model, GPT-5.6 Sol, solved only 28.7% of the problems in standard mode and 31.5% in Pro mode. The original GPT-5 model had failed less than 5% on the first version of the test while Claude Opus 4.8 had reached 16%.

A problem from the benchmark would normally require 20 to 40 hours of work by a human expert, at a cost of several thousand dollars. In its press release, OpenAI claims that its AI model processes the same analysis for just a few dollars.

Two strategies, one same race

Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey believes AI could soon unlock some major barriers in medical research, even though the broader benefits will take time. Immunology professor Derya Unutmaz goes further, judging that the use of AI in medicine will soon become essential.

This rivalry also takes place in a tense geopolitical context. Reference is made to the rise of Chinese AI models as well as American export restrictions. This pushes Anthropic to consider new countries for hosting its models.

In any case, this scientific battle is just the beginning. If Anthropic and OpenAI invest so much in research, it is because AI applied to biology could become the next big market after chatbots. It remains to be seen which of the two strategies will establish itself as a reference in the artificial intelligence sector.