Citrini, the publisher of the 'AI Doomsday Report,' had Claude research scorpion venom with the aim of identifying new investment opportunities.

Beating AI News Flash: In February of this year, Citrini Research published "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis," envisioning AI massively replacing white-collar workers and triggering an economic recession, which briefly roiled Wall Street. Recently, this investment research firm partnered with Anthropic to have Claude attempt to design anti-scorpion-venom proteins.

Citrini began looking for investment opportunities outside AI infrastructure starting in June of this year and set its sights on the long-depressed life sciences sector. But experts are sharply divided on the prospects of AI drug discovery, so five researchers lacking drug development experience decided to verify it themselves. They chose scorpion venom because toxin structures are relatively well-defined, making experiments easier to carry out. Moreover, traditional antivenom serums require injecting horses with toxins and then extracting antibodies, a cumbersome and costly production process.

The team obtained an unreleased Anthropic research model. With assistance from researchers, Claude spent 64 hours generating about 320,000 protein designs and screened out 180 candidates. It then used Claude to supplement another 31, which were sent to two laboratories for testing. In the end, 17 proteins were able to bind the target scorpion toxin, but none bound multiple toxins simultaneously, and it has not yet been verified whether they can actually neutralize the venom.

What really interested Citrini was the follow-up experiments. AI completed the design in a few days, but laboratory validation took nearly two months. Computing costs were about $50,000, covered by Anthropic; the lab bills were close to $150,000.

Citrini thus discovered a new investment opportunity. As AI accelerates drug design, more candidate molecules may need to be sent to laboratories for synthesis, testing, and validation. This work cannot be done by computers alone; it also requires expensive equipment, reagents, and specialized personnel.

Therefore, Citrini is not only focused on companies using AI to develop drugs, but also bullish on Charles River, Revvity, and Tecan, which provide pharmaceutical companies with outsourced experiments, testing equipment, and automation tools.