Anthropic discloses Claude now leads 26% of its own AI R&D
First lab-reported R&D automation index is out; the numbers are self-assessed, so watch monthly updates and third-party verification.
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Anthropic published its R&D Automation Index on September 17: as of August 2026, Claude "leads" 26% of the company's AI R&D work, and more than 90% of work sits at automation level AL3 or above.
The index is built from roughly 15,000 sampled tasks in July, organized into 542 nodes and weighted by person-time, with an independent Claude judge rating each node monthly. No measured task yet reaches AL5, full autonomy.
This is a first-party measurement: tasks were listed by a Claude agent and rated by a Claude judge, and Anthropic itself notes the judge could share error modes with the model it evaluates; third-party verification is not yet in place. The monthly updates to AL4 and AL5 are what to watch.