Anthropic on Wednesday announced that it has acquired Vercept, an AI startup with deep roots to some of the biggest names in Seattle’s tech scene. The acquisition marks the latest after Anthropic acquired coding agent engine Bun in December to help scale Claude Code.
Vercept had created tools for more complex agentic tasks, including its product Vy, a computer-use agent in the cloud that could operate a remote Apple Macbook. Vercept is one of the many startups working on re-imagining the personal computer for the age of AI agents. As part of the deal, Anthropic is shuttering Vercept’s product on March 25.
The startup was a grad of Seattle’s AI-focused incubator A12, which spawned from the longstanding Allen Institute for AI. Vercept’s co-founders had roots with the Allen Institute, as well, and were previously researchers there. One co-founder, Matt Deitke, made news last year as one of the AI researchers who negotiated a monster $250 million salary from Meta to join its Superintelligence Lab. On Wednesday, Deitke congratulated his former colleagues in a post on X.
Vercept was a relatively high profile AI startup in the region. In a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition by Anthropic, Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani said the startup had raised a total of $50 million. She called out A12’s Seth Bannon, a board member, as the lead investor. Vercept previously announced it had raised a $16 million seed round last January.
The list of angel investors was impressive, too, and included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, Geekwire reported.
In Anthropic’s announcement of the acquisition, the company named co-founders Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick as some of the team brought on to join Anthropic in the acquisition. However, not all of Vercept’s co-founders are joining the Claude maker.
Matt Deitke, another Vercept co-founder, made news last year as one of the AI researchers who negotiated a monster salary when Meta was hiring and poaching for its Superintelligence Lab. On Wednesday, Deitke congratulated his former colleagues in a post on X.
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