Claude Now Leads About a Quarter of the Work Building Its Own Successor

Rating as of September 18, 2026: 6/10 · Eyebrow Raised

Claude is not building the next Claude by itself. But the share of the work it leads went from almost nothing to a quarter in about six months.

What changed

Anthropic published three new measurements meant to show the public what is happening inside a frontier AI lab [1]. The headline one is an index of how much of the company's AI research and development is done by Claude itself.

The scale runs from no AI involvement up to fully autonomous. In the middle, "collaborates" means the AI does big chunks of work under close human direction, and "leads" means it can finish most of a task from a high-level instruction while a human supervises [1]. As of August 2026, Anthropic says [1]:

• Claude "leads" 26% of its AI research and development work.
• More than 90% of the work is at least at the "collaborates" level.
• Claude is not operating fully autonomously in any part of the work measured.

Reuters reports that the "leads" share was about 1% in March [2]. Anthropic also said roughly 30,000 AI agents were doing research and engineering work on its main internal platform at any one time in August, that every action they take is checked by a monitor before it runs, and that about one in 47,000 actions was blocked [1][2]. It also shared that about 6% of the computing power used for AI research went to safety work in a sample week [1].

Why it matters

There is an idea in AI safety circles that the risky moment comes when AI starts doing most of the work of building better AI. Things could speed up in ways that are hard for people to follow. Anthropic says plainly that this is why it built the measure: models accelerating their own development "could make it more challenging for humans to understand or control these systems" [1].

Until now, that idea was mostly a prediction. This is a number, from inside a lab, with a trend. The number itself isn't scary. The trend is what made me sit up.

I also give Anthropic real credit here. It is asking other labs to publish the same measurements and suggests they could become triggers for stronger rules, like a fixed testing period before a new model gets used for more AI research [1].

What you can probably ignore

"Claude is improving itself now." Anthropic says no measured part of its research runs fully autonomously. Humans are still supervising [1].

"30,000 AI agents are loose inside Anthropic." They are working on internal systems, and every action passes through a monitor first [1].

Why it earned this rating

On the side of a higher number:

• It is measured progress toward AI doing AI research, from inside a frontier lab [1].
• The rate of change is fast: about 1% to 26% in roughly six months [2].

On the side of a lower number:

• Nothing went wrong. This is a measurement, not an incident.
• Anthropic grades the work with its own models, and admits the method is a prototype that would need outside checking [1].
• Publishing it is itself a step toward more transparency.

A notable new capability trend, reported honestly, with no harm, sits in Eyebrow Raised. I gave it a 6 because of how quickly the number moved.

What I'm watching next

• The next reading. Anthropic says it will publish these regularly. If "leads" keeps climbing at this pace, my number goes up [2].
• Whether other labs publish comparable figures.
• Outside verification. Anthropic says it plans to bring in independent evaluators to check numbers like these [1].

Bunker Check

Current rating: 6/10 · Eyebrow Raised

Direction: Leaning up

Could move higher if: The share keeps rising quickly, or any part of AI research becomes fully autonomous.

Could move lower if: The number levels off, or outside checks show it was overstated.

The shovel stays in the garage. I would just like to know who is holding the measuring tape next time.

Sources

1. Anthropic, "Measurements for understanding the pace of AI development inside frontier labs," September 17, 2026 (primary source). https://www.anthropic.com/institute/measuring-pace-of-ai-development
2. Reuters (via Investing.com), "Anthropic says Claude now leads a quarter of work building its next AI models," September 17, 2026. https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/anthropic-says-claude-now-leads-a-quarter-of-work-building-its-next-ai-models-4906530