Anthropic’s announcement that its AI found a CRISPR-like enzyme system has drawn scepticism from biologists. The company said last month that its Claude AI agents found a novel enzyme system in viral DNA, similar to the machinery behind gene-editing tools such as CRISPR Cas-9. CEO Dario Amodei called it a Claude-led discovery with great scientific potential. Shares of gene-editing firms fell after the news. But outside experts called the finding early and incremental. These are very interesting preliminary results, but they do not demonstrate gene editing, said Aaron Engelhart of the University of Minnesota. CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang called it an exciting example of AI agents in discovery but said it merits further work. The pre-print is not peer reviewed. Anthropic said about 950 agents searched nearly 1.9 billion protein clusters in 21 hours. Its life sciences head admitted the team does not yet know the finding’s significance. The announcement came as Anthropic prepares for a possible stock market listing.