Last week, Anthropic came out with an update that its AI model Claude had “autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system that is associated with an array of DNA repeats, a pattern reminiscent of CRISPR.” It didn’t take long for gene-editing stocks to decline on this news. Shares of Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), Beam Therapeutics (BEAM), CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP), and Prime Medicine (PRME) all declined on the release, among other names.
Developments related to Anthropic have already caused jitters across multiple industries this year. For example, the launch of Claude Code Security spooked cybersecurity stocks earlier in 2026, while Opus 4.6 caused a knee-jerk reaction among SaaS stocks. However, in both cases, these impacted stocks recovered after initial negative reactions. Similar to cybersecurity and SaaS stocks, the negative reaction among gene-editing companies is likely temporary. That means investors may actually want to consider some of these names for accumulation.
