  The production of four bottom quarks is an important benchmark channel for
Higgs analyses and searches for new physics at the LHC. We report on the
calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the process pp -> b
anti-b b anti-b + X with the HELAC-NLO automated framework, and present results
for inclusive cross sections and differential distributions. We discuss the
impact of the higher-order corrections and, in particular, the effect of the
bottom quark mass. In addition, we provide an estimate of the theoretical
uncertainty from the variation of the renormalisation and factorisation scales
and the parton distribution functions. The results are obtained with a new
subtraction formalism for real radiation at next-to-leading order, implemented
in the HELAC-DIPOLES package.
