After spending tens of billions on R&D, Anthropic sees reasons to slow its pursuit of self-improving AI - R&D World
By Google News AI ·
Credit: R&D World, from Anthropic’s R&D Automation Index
Anthropic uses Claude to run experiments, prepare training data and test the models that will succeed it. After spending nearly $28 billion on R&D since the start of 2024, the company says AI could soon double the pace of its model development.
In its November 2 amended IPO prospectus, Anthropic says its internal estimates and expectations for future models indicate that “we may imminently meet” its threshold for dramatically accelerated progress attributable to AI. Its Responsible Scaling Policy defines that as roughly two years of baseline progress in one year. The company is still assessing whether its models have crossed that threshold.
Claude already writes and reviews code, automates evaluations and safety audits, and helps researchers build the next generation of models. Anthropic calls this “closing the loop.” Measured at list prices, the value of its internal model use grew more than 250-fold from January to September 2026, according to the filing.
Credit: R&D World, from Anthropic’s S-1 and amended S-1 filings
Anthropic spent $2.3 billion on R&D in 2024, $6.3 billion in 2025 and $19.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026. About $9.5 billion of the 2026 spending came in the third quarter alone.
In an October 3 interview with MTS, Vals AI co-founder and CEO Rayan Krishnan predicted that Anthropic could reach full recursive self-improvement around July or August 2027, based on tasks in his company’s RSI Index. “It means that the work required by machine learning engineers at Anthropic would be automated,” he said. Krishnan acknowledged that chip design and other constraints could limit further acceleration.
Thinking Machines chief scientist John Schulman raised a specific obstacle in a September…
Originally published by Google News AI