Anthropic STEM Fellowship 2027

US$100,000–$167,000 for four months working on your field's grand challenges with Claude — requires a STEM PhD and existing US work authorisation.

The Anthropic STEM Fellows Program pays US$100,000–$167,000 for four months of full-time work inside Anthropic, pairing your domain expertise with frontier Claude models to attack the hardest open problems in your field.

Applications close 28 October 2026. Offers go out by 20 November, and the programme runs 12 January to 8 May 2027.

Two things rule most Indian applicants out, and both are stated in the posting

• "Existing authorization to work in the United States for the duration of the program."
• "We are not currently able to sponsor visas for fellows.
• To participate in the Fellows program, you need to have or independently obtain full-time work authorization in the United States."
• This is not a condition you sort out after being selected — it is a minimum qualification, screened at application.
• If you are in India without an existing US work visa, you cannot take this up.
• Anthropic does sponsor visas for its regular full-time roles, and the posting says explicitly that those policies do not apply to the Fellows Program.
• Second: this is a job, not a grant.
• It is a fixed-term contract position, and Fellows are engaged through an employer of record rather than employed directly by Anthropic.
• The money is salary for four months of full-time work.
• Nothing goes to a company, no equity changes hands, and there is nothing to repay.
• If you are looking for capital for a startup, this is not that.
• It is listed here because founders keep asking about it.
• The people it genuinely fits are PhD researchers already in the US — including Indian researchers on an existing visa, for whom it is one of the better-paid short fellowships going.
• Anthropic is building toward "an AI scientist" — a system with the long-horizon reasoning and experimental judgement to push the frontier in real disciplines.
• Getting there needs people who have spent years at the frontier of those fields, which is what the fellowship buys.
• You work in a small pod of Fellows from related fields.
• Your pod meets weekly with Anthropic researchers to share methods and pressure-test ideas.
• You get a grand challenge — an ambitious, open-ended problem in your field, scoped with their research team so four months is enough to make real progress — plus access to frontier Claude models and internal evaluation tooling.

Three responsibilities

• The first cohort was 20+ Fellows across mathematics, physics, the life sciences and engineering, running June to September 2026.
• Anthropic says the problems they built now feed Claude's training and one of its internal science evaluations — so the work is used, not shelved.
• Apply through the Greenhouse posting before 28 October 2026. Offers are planned by 20 November.
• Later stages typically include a take-home exercise and conversations with the research team about your research interests and possible project directions — so expect to defend a direction, not just a CV.
• Anthropic publishes guidance on using AI in its application process; worth reading before you draft anything, given what the programme is.
• One safety note from Anthropic itself: their recruiters only contact candidates from @anthropic.com addresses, and will never ask for money or banking details before your first day.