On Wednesday, Anthropic announced it has acquired Vercept, an AI startup closely connected to some of Seattle’s top tech figures. It follows Anthropic’s December purchase of Bunn, a coding agent engine, to help grow Claude Code.
Vercept had created tools for more complex agentic tasks, including its product Vy, a cloud-based computer-use agent that could operate a remote Apple MacBook. Vercept is one of many startups working to reimagine the personal computer for the age of AI agents. As part of the deal, Anthropic is shuttering Vercept’s product on March 25th.
The startup graduated from Seattle’s AI2 incubator, which the Allen Institute for AI founded. Vercept co-founders also previously worked as researchers at the Allen Union Institute. One co-founder, Matt Deitke, made headlines last year for negotiating a $250 million salary from Meta to join its super intelligence lab. On Wednesday, Deitke congratulated his former colleagues on X.
Vercept was a well-known AI startup in the area. In a LinkedIn post about the Anthropic acquisition, CEO Kiana Ehsani said the company had raised $50 million in total. She named Seth Bannon, a board member from Fifty Years, as the lead investor. Last January, Vercept announced a $60 million seed round.
The startup also attracted notable angel investors, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, and Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, according to GeekWire.
Anthropic’s announcement named co-founders Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Gershick as part of the team joining Anthropic; however, not all of Vercept’s co-founders are joining the company behind Claude.
Oren Etzioni, previously named as a Vercept co-founder and investor, is well known in Seattle as the founding leader of the Allen Institute for AI, like Deitke. He is not joining Anthropic and was openly unhappy about the acqui-hire, which he posted on LinkedIn after about a year. Vercept is throwing in the towel and giving its customers 30 days to get off the platform. Sad to see a fantastic team join Anthropic. I wish them the very best.
In his LinkedIn post, Etzioni accused Bannon-Vercept’s lead investor of being partially responsible for not hiring the right business people. The two investors argued back and forth, with Bannon replying, “You disparaged the history, the heroic work, of the founders for achieving an outcome most would only have dreamed of.” They also accused each other of things like lying and making legal threats.
Public arguments between investors may be entertaining, but they don’t mean much. What matters is the high stakes in building the next big AI company. Now, a bright startup with significant funding will become part of Anthropic.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Etzioni says he made a return on his investment. Anthropic clearly wanted these researchers, especially since one of them is now at Meta.
Still, Etzioni told the choir he is disappointed. I am pleased to have gotten a positive return, but obviously disappointed that, after just a little over a year, with so much traction and such a fantastic team, we are basically throwing in the towel, he said.
We could build independently and work toward the same vision as two separate versions, or join forces with an incredible team and accelerate that vision into reality. The decision to join Anthropic was easy, she said.
Source: Anthropic acquires computer-use AI startup Vercept after Meta poached one of its founders
