Claude Science Lead Alec Tarashansky Leaves Anthropic for AI Health Startup OpenEvidence

Alec Tarashansky, a member of Anthropic's technical staff and head of Claude Science development, has left the company to join OpenEvidence, an AI-powered healthcare company.

Tarashansky holds a PhD in bioengineering from Stanford University and previously spent three years at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), where he worked on scientific software development. According to his LinkedIn profile, he brought the original prototype of Claude Science to Anthropic, built during a Thanksgiving break, and spent about seven months developing the product with colleagues Eric Kauderer-Abrams, Jonah Cool and Anneke Jong before its market launch. He most recently served as Claude Science's development lead.

OpenEvidence provides an evidence-based AI clinical evidence retrieval and reasoning engine for physicians, sometimes described as a "ChatGPT for doctors." Its services now reach more than two-thirds of physicians across the United States. In less than two years, the company's valuation has grown from $1 billion to $15 billion, making it the largest unicorn in the life sciences sector globally.

Anthropic and OpenEvidence had previously announced a partnership to expand AI-driven clinical decision support, aiming to reach doctors in more than 100 underserved regions.