OpenAI has acquired Orchestra Bio, a startup building AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies manage drug development, the ChatGPT maker shared exclusively with Axios.

Why it matters: Rival AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic are both pushing into science as they look to expand beyond their core competencies in coding and cybersecurity.

State of play: OpenAI will integrate Orchestra's team and technology into Rosalind, its suite of AI models and tools designed for life sciences researchers, the company said.

  • Orchestra's platform allows scientists to delegate tasks like monitoring studies, tracking drug development timelines and identifying potential delays to AI agents.
  • Both companies aim to deploy agents that can connect scientific findings with the decisions and next steps required to advance potential treatments.
  • Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Between the lines: AI companies don't just want to increase productivity, they want to say they are responsible for, say, curing cancer, solving math, and fundamentally changing every critical industry in the world.

  • Those ambitions have fueled acquisitions from rival AI labs.
  • Anthropic acquired AI biotech startup Coefficient Bio for roughly $400 million in April, according to The Information.

Zoom in: OpenAI introduced its specialized GPT-Rosalind model in April to help researchers tackle complex problems in biology, chemistry and drug discovery.

  • OpenAI has also partnered with pharmaceutical giants including Novo Nordisk and Moderna to bring AI into research and development workflows.
  • OpenAI says developing a new medicine typically takes 10 to 15 years, a timeline it hopes AI can shorten.

Zoom out Anthropic has been making its own aggressive push into life sciences.

  • In June, Anthropic launched Claude Science, an AI-powered research platform that connects scientific databases, analysis tools and specialized agents.
  • In September, the company announced a new biological research lab and said Claude had helped discover a previously unknown enzyme system with similarities to CRISPR, though some scientists said these finders were overblown, per Bloomberg.

The bottom line: The AI race is shifting from building the best models to applying that intelligence across industries.

  • Several AI investors told Axios a key question as AI companies go public is how far they can expand into new markets.