Anthropic on Wednesday was announced that it has acquired Vercept, an artificial intelligence startup with deep roots in some of the biggest names in the Seattle tech scene. The acquisition marks the latest after Anthropic got Bun coding engine in December to help scale the Claude Code.
Vercept had built tools for more complex agent tasks, including its Vy product, a cloud computing agent that could handle a remote Apple MacBook. Vercept is one of several startups working to redefine the personal computer for the era of AI agents. As part of the deal, Anthropic is shutting down its Vercept product on March 25.
The startup was a degree of Seattle AI incubationr A12, born out of the long-running Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Vercept’s co-founders also have roots in the Allen Institute, and were previously researchers there. A co-founder, Matt Deitke, made news last year as one of the AI researchers who negotiated a monster salary of $250 million from Meta to join the 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 one Post on LinkedIn Announcing the acquisition by Anthropic, Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani said the startup had raised a total of $50 million. He called on A12 board member Seth Bannon as a lead investor. Vercept previously announced that it had increased a $16 million seed round last January.
The list of angel investors was also impressive, including 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 part of the team joining Anthropic in the acquisition. However, not all of Vercept’s co-founders join the Claude maker.
Oren Etzionis, who has previously named as a co-founder of Vercept and an investor in the startup, he is widely known in Seattle as the founder of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Along with Deitke, he also doesn’t join Anthropic, and was vocally less than happy with the rental. He posted on LinkedIn: “After a little over a year, Vercept throws in the towel and gives their customers 30 days to exit the platform. Sad. A fantastic team joins Anthropic. I wish them the best!”
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Etzioni is also a professor at the University of Washington and known for other startups is founded and backed as a VC. He did not respond to a request for comment.
In Etzioni’s LinkedIn post, he accused Bannon, Vercept’s lead investor, of being “partially responsible” for Vercept not hiring the right entrepreneurs. A back-and-forth ensued between the investors, with Bannon condemning Etzioni’s remarks: “… you underestimated the heroic work of the founders to achieve an outcome that most could only dream of,” Bannon responded in the LinkedIn thread. They also accused each other of other less palatable things, such as lying and legal threats.
While public spats between investors are entertaining and essentially pointless, the underlying motivation is remarkable. The stakes are high for building the next big AI winner, and now a promising startup that’s built a decent-sized war is entering Anthropic.
Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Etzioni says he got his money back. Anthropic clearly wanted these researchers (perhaps — especially — with another one of them in the Meta).
Still, Etzioni told GeekWire that he remains upset. “I’m pleased to have a positive return, but obviously disappointed that after just over a year with so much traction and such a fantastic team, we’re basically canceling,” he said.
The founders joining Anthropic, however, seem happy, according to CEO Ehsani’s LinkedIn post. “The choices were clear: we could build independently and work toward the same vision with two separate versions of it, or join forces with an incredible team and accelerate that vision into reality. The decision became an easy one,” she said of joining Anthropic.
