On Thursday, Anthropic said Claude is taking on an increasingly central role in the development of the company's next-generation AI models, with the chatbot now leading more than one-quarter of its measured research and development work.

Claude's Role In AI Research Surges

In a blog post, the AI startup said that Claude was responsible for leading 26% of its AI research and development work in August, up sharply from just 1% in March.

This is based on a measurement framework developed by independent nonprofit Epoch AI.

Anthropic stressed that Claude was not working fully autonomously in any of the areas covered by the measurement. Instead, the figure reflects situations where AI played the leading role while working alongside human researchers.

More than 90% of Anthropic's AI R&D work in August was performed at the "AI collaborates" level or higher, according to the company's measurement.

30,000 AI Agents Work Inside Anthropic

Anthropic said approximately 30,000 AI agents were conducting research and engineering work at any one time on its most-used internal platform in August.

The company stated it screens every action the agents take before execution. Of more than a billion decisions made during the month, roughly one in 47,000 was blocked.

Anthropic Details AI Safety Spending

Claude parent also disclosed that about 6% of the computing power it used for AI research during a sample week in July went toward safety research. For research conducted by AI itself, the share was approximately 12%.

Anthropic said those figures were conservative because computing used for work that advanced both AI capabilities and safety was classified as capability-related.

Amodei Urges AI Development Slowdown

Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the pace of development in an essay published amid growing warnings from researchers about potentially catastrophic risks.

This came after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, citing concerns over the company's approach.

Anthropic, OpenAI Seek Massive Funding

Earlier this week, it was reported that Nvidia Corp. (NVDA  ) is considering investing as much as $10 billion in Anthropic's potential IPO, as the Claude developer seeks to raise up to $100 billion at a valuation of roughly $2 trillion.

Anthropic rival OpenAI is reportedly holding preliminary talks with major investors about a new funding round that could value the ChatGPT maker at around $1.2 trillion.