Anthropic acquires computer-use AI startup Vercept after Meta poached one of its founders

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 Fifty Years’ 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.

Oren Etzioni, who has previously been named as a co-founder of Vercept and investor in the startup, is well known in Seattle as the founding leader of the Allen Institute for AI. Along with Deitke, he is also not joining Anthropic, and was vocally less pleased about the acqui-hire. He posted on LinkedIn: “After a little bit more than a year, Vercept is throwing in the towel and giving their customers 30 days to get off the platform. Sad. A fantastic team is joining Anthropic. I wish them the very best!”

Etzioni is also a professor at the University of Washington and known for other startups he’s founded and backed as a VC. He did not respond to a request for comment.

On Etzioni’s LinkedIn post, he accused Bannon, the Vercept lead investor, of being “partly responsible” for Vercept not hiring the correct business people. A back and forth ensued between the investors, with Bannon condemning Etzioni’s remarks: “… you disparaged the heroic work of the founders for achieving an outcome most could only dream of,” Bannon replied in the LinkedIn string. They also accused each other of other less savory things like lying and legal threats.

While public spats between investors are entertaining, and essentially meaningless, the underlying motivation is notable. The stakes are high to build the next big AI winner, and now a promising startup that raised a decently sized war chest will be tucked into Anthropic.

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Etzioni says he got a return on his money. Anthropic clearly wanted these researchers (perhaps — especially — with another of them at Meta).

Still, Etzioni told GeekWire that he remains bummed. “I’m pleased to have gotten a positive return but obviously disappointed that after just a little over a year with so much traction, and such a fantastic team, we’re basically throwing in the towel,” he said.

The founders joining Anthropic, however, appear happy, according to CEO’s Ehsani’s LinkedIn post. “The choices were clear: we could build independently and work toward the same vision as two separate versions of it, or join forces with an incredible team and accelerate that vision into reality. The decision became an easy choice,” she said of joining Anthropic.

Correction: Bannon is a VC with Fifty Years, not AI2. The story has been corrected and we apologize for the error.