Anthropic has acquired Vercept, a Seattle-based AI startup, in a move to fast-track its agentic AI roadmap. Vercept, emerging from Allen Institute for AI’s AI2 incubator, raised $50M with backing from Fifty Years and angels including Eric Schmidt, Jeff Dean, Kyle Vogt, and Arash Ferdowsi. Founders Kiana Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick join Anthropic, while Vercept’s Vy product will sunset in March.
The acquisition follows Anthropic’s earlier Bun buy and Meta’s hiring of co-founder Matt Deitke for its Superintelligence Lab, highlighting intensifying competition for elite AI talent.
Strategically, this signals a shift: AI innovation increasingly relies on talent consolidation rather than standalone startups, as leading players race to build differentiated agentic AI capabilities.
Overall, this is a talent-first play: acquire the best minds to control next-generation AI infrastructure and accelerate deployment at scale.
