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Anthropic Wednesday he announced that it has acquired Vercept, an AI startup with deep roots in the biggest names in Seattle photography. This find is the most recent after Anthropic found an agent coding engine Bun in December to help Claude Code.
Vercept has developed tools for more complex applications, including its Vy tool, a cloud computing application that can remotely access an Apple MacBook. Vercept is one of many startups working to reinvent the computing age of AI assistants. As part of the agreement, Anthropic is closing sales of Vercept on March 25.
The startup was Seattle’s AI-focused grad marriedr A12, which came from the Allen Institute for AI. The co-founders of Vercept had roots with the Allen Institute, as well, and were previously researchers there. The co-founder, Matt Deitke, made headlines 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 thanked his former colleagues in the post on X.
Vercept was the leading AI developer in the region. In a LinkedIn post announcing the purchase of Anthropic, Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani said the startup had raised $50 million in funding. He called A12’s Seth Bannon, a board member, as the chief financial officer. Vercept previously announced that it has upgraded a $16 million seed round January is over.
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 announcing the purchase of Anthropic, the company cited co-founders Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick as members of the team who joined Anthropic in the purchase. However, not all of Vercept’s co-founders are joining developer Claude.
Oren Etzioni, who said already mentioned as a co-founder of Vercept and an investor in startups, he is well known in Seattle as the founding director of the Allen Institute for AI. Along with Deitke, he is no longer joining Anthropic, and was not very happy with the acqui-hire. He wrote and LinkedIn: “A little over a year later, Vercept they are throwing in the towel and giving their customers 30 days to get off the platform. Sad. The best team is joining Anthropic. I wish them all the best!”
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Etzioni is a professor at the University of Washington and is known some basics was founded and supported as a VC. He did not respond to a request for comment.
On Etzioni’s LinkedIn page, he accused Bannon, Vercept’s investor, of being “responsible” for Vercept not hiring the right business people. Back and forth took place between investors, and Bannon criticizes Etzioni’s comment: “… you disrespected the creative work of the founders to achieve results that many cannot imagine,” Bannon responded in a LinkedIn thread. They also accused each other of unpleasant things such as lying and threatening to sue.
While the public debate between investors is interesting, and in fact meaningless, the motivations are obvious. The requirements are high to create a great AI winner, and now the inspiring startup that raised the war chest will be incorporated into Anthropic.
Although the deal was not disclosed, Etzioni reportedly got his money back. Anthropic wanted these researchers (probably – most likely – one of them in Meta).
However, Etzioni told GeekWire that he is still upset. “I’m happy that I’m back in good shape but obviously I’m disappointed that after just a few years with a very good performance, and a very good team, we’re throwing in the towel,” he said.
Founders joining Anthropic, however, seem excited, according to CEO Ehsani’s LinkedIn post. “The decisions were clear: we can build independently and work towards the same vision as two different brands, or join an amazing team and accelerate the vision into reality.
