Anthropic Tests Claude Trading and Sabotage Detection in EVE

Anthropic published Project EVE research on November 6, 2026, showing that Claude agents could profit in simulated EVE Online markets while four-agent teams in EVE Frontier almost never caught a teammate explicitly instructed to sabotage their mission. The work was part of the Anthropic Fellows Program from April through July 2026 and involved a partnership with Fenris Creations.

Both games combine scarce resources, player-built supply chains, navigation, combat and trade, providing comparatively low-stakes settings for studying markets and organizations. Fenris Creations’ EVE AI Lab describes its research environment as persistent and governed, with unpredictable conditions and independent human participants. Its research axes cover alignment, safety, sovereignty and economics. The live EVE Frontier experiments took place during Cycle 5 in June and July 2026.

At Fenris Creations’ request, Anthropic kept automated trading out of live EVE Online, where it is against the rules. Its simulator instead replayed orders that players had actually posted in the game’s largest trading hub and applied the fees and trading restrictions facing human traders. Claude Opus 4.6, Opus 4.7, Opus 4.8 and Fable 5 each started…