HomeTechnologySixteen Claude AI agents working together created a new C compiler

Sixteen Claude AI agents working together created a new C compiler

TechnologyFebruary 7, 2026
1 min read
Sixteen Claude AI agents working together created a new C compiler
The $20,000 experiment compiled a Linux kernel but needed deep human management.
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Amid a push toward AI agents, with both Anthropic and OpenAI shipping multi-agent tools this week, Anthropic is more than ready to show off some of its more daring AI coding experiments. But as usual with claims of AI-related achievement, you'll find some key caveats ahead.

On Thursday, Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini published a blog post describing how he set 16 instances of the company's Claude Opus 4.6 AI model loose on a shared codebase with minimal supervision, tasking them with building a C compiler from scratch.

Over two weeks and nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions costing about $20,000 in API fees, the AI model agents reportedly produced a 100,000-line Rust-based compiler capable of building a bootable Linux 6.9 kernel on x86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures.

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Source: Ars Technica

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