Anthropic Acquires Vercept, Shuts Down Product
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- Anthropic announced the acquisition of Vercept, a Seattle AI startup, on Wednesday and will shutter Vercept’s product on March 25.
- Vercept had raised $50 million total, including a $16 million seed round in January and backing from investors such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co‑founder Arash Ferdowsi.
- Kiana Ehsani as Vercept’s CEO, said the team—including co‑founders Luca Weihs and Ross Girshick—will join Anthropic, while co‑founder Oren Etzioni and former Meta researcher Matt Deitke will not.
- Oren Etzioni posted on LinkedIn that Vercept is “throwing in the towel,” criticized lead investor Seth Bannon for hiring missteps, and noted the team’s departure after only a year.
- Seth Bannon responded to Etzioni’s criticism, defending the founders’ work and accusing Etzioni of disparaging the team.
- Matt Deitke previously negotiated a $250 million salary to join Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, and he congratulated his former colleagues after the acquisition.
Why it matters: Anthropic gains Vercept’s AI‑agent expertise and its team, accelerating Claude’s capabilities, while Vercept’s customers lose access to the cloud MacBook agent after a 30‑day shutdown; investors like Seth Bannon see a return, but co‑founders Oren Etzioni and Matt Deitke feel the deal cuts short the startup’s momentum.
