Anthropic announced on Wednesday the acquisition of Vercept, a high-profile Seattle based AI startup specializing in complex agentic automation. The move underscores Anthropic’s aggressive expansion into “computer-use” technology, following its December acquisition of the coding engine Bun.
While the financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, the acquisition effectively brings Vercept’s elite research talent under the Anthropic umbrella to accelerate the development of Claude Code and broader autonomous agent ecosystems.
As part of the transition, Vercept will cease independent operations. Its flagship product, Vy a cloud-based agent capable of remotely operating macOS environments—is scheduled to be shuttered on March 25.
Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani characterized the merger as a strategic alignment of visions. “The decision became an easy choice,” Ehsani stated, noting that joining forces with Anthropic would “accelerate that vision into reality” more effectively than remaining independent.
Vercept emerged from Ai2, the incubator arm of the prestigious Allen Institute for AI (AI2). The startup’s rapid ascent was fueled by significant capital and a blue-chip roster of backers:
The company raised a total of $50 million, including a $16 million seed round led by A12’s Seth Bannon. High-profile supporters included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi.
Key members of the leadership team, including Ehsani and co-founders Luca Weihs and Ross Girshick, will join Anthropic. Notably absent from the transition is co-founder Matt Deitke, who recently moved to Meta’s Superintelligence Lab.
Despite the “positive return” for shareholders, the acquisition has sparked a rare public dispute among the startup’s early stakeholders. Oren Etzioni, a founding figure at AI2 and a Vercept investor, expressed disappointment over the company’s short lifespan.
In a series of candid social media exchanges, Etzioni criticized the decision to “throw in the towel” after only a year of operation, giving customers just 30 days to migrate off the platform. The disagreement escalated into a public spat with lead investor Seth Bannon, involving accusations regarding the startup’s business hiring strategy and the nature of the “acqui-hire” outcome.
This acquisition highlights the intense talent war currently defining the AI sector. By absorbing Vercept, Anthropic secures a team experienced in the difficult task of bridging the gap between Large Language Models and functional, OS-level execution. This move signals that the next frontier for Claude will not just be generating text, but actively navigating and managing digital environments.
