Anthropic announced its acquisition of computer-use AI startup Vercept on Wednesday, marking the company’s second strategic purchase in recent months.
Vercept developed tools for complex agentic tasks, most notably its cloud-based product Vy, a computer-use agent capable of operating a remote Apple MacBook. The startup was part of a wave of companies reimagining personal computing for the age of AI agents. As a condition of the acquisition, Anthropic will shutter Vercept’s product on March 25.
The Seattle-based startup graduated from A12, an AI-focused incubator that originated from the Allen Institute for AI. Vercept’s co-founders had previous ties to the institute as researchers. The company was relatively high-profile in the region, having raised a total of $50 million. Seth Bannon of A12 served as the lead investor. In January of last year, Vercept announced a $16 million seed round. Angel investors included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi.
One of Vercept’s co-founders, Matt Deitke, made headlines last year after negotiating a $250 million salary from Meta to join its Superintelligence Lab. Deitke is not joining Anthropic and congratulated his former colleagues on X following the acquisition announcement.
Anthropic is hiring co-founders Kiana Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick. Co-founders Oren Etzioni and Matt Deitke will not join the Claude maker. Etzioni, the founding leader of the Allen Institute for AI, publicly expressed disappointment regarding the outcome. In a LinkedIn post, he stated, “After a little bit more than a year, Vercept is throwing in the towel and giving their customers 30 days to get off the platform. Sad. A fantastic team is joining Anthropic. I wish them the very best!”
Etzioni confirmed he received a positive return on his investment but remained disappointed in the decision to wind down operations. “I’m 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’re basically throwing in the towel,” he told GeekWire.
Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani framed the acquisition as a strategic acceleration of the company’s goals. “The choices were clear: we could build independently and work toward the same vision as two separate versions of it, or join forces with an incredible team and accelerate that vision into reality. The decision became an easy choice,” Ehsani said in a LinkedIn post.
