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

Vercept was a high-profile AI startup in the region. In a LinkedIn post announcing the Anthropic acquisition, Vercept CEO Kayana Ehsani said the startup had raised a total of $50 million. It has named A12’s Seth Bannon, a board member, as the lead investor. Vercept previously announced that it raised a $16 million seed funding round last January.

The list of angel investors was also impressive, and included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, according to GeekWire.

In Anthropic’s announcement of the acquisition, the company named co-founders Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick, some of the team members joining Anthropic in the acquisition. However, not all Vercept founders joined Claude’s maker.

Oren Etzioni, previously named as a co-founder of Vercept and an investor in the startup, is well known in Seattle as the founding leader of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Along with Deitke, he also did not join Anthropic, and was less than vocally happy about the hiring process. He posted on LinkedIn: “After a little over a year, Vercept is giving in and giving their customers 30 days to exit the platform. Sad. Great team joining Anthropic. I wish them the best!”

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

In Etzioni’s LinkedIn post, he accused Bannon, Vercept’s lead investor, of being “partially responsible” for Vercept not hiring the right business people. A back-and-forth debate ensued among investors, with Bannon condemning Etzioni’s statements: “…I belittled the heroic work of the founders to achieve an outcome that most people can only dream of,” Bannon responded in the LinkedIn thread. They also accused each other of other less savory things like lying and legal threats.

While the general bickering between investors is entertaining, and essentially meaningless, the underlying motivation is notable. The stakes are high to build the next big winner in AI, and now a promising startup that has amassed a decent-sized war chest will be folded into Anthropic.

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Etzioni says he got a return on his money. The Anthropic clearly wanted these researchers (perhaps – especially – with another one of them in the meta).

However, Etzioni told GeekWire that he still feels shocked. “I’m happy to have a positive comeback but obviously I’m disappointed that after just over a year with so much momentum, and such a great team, we’re basically giving up,” he said.

However, the founders who joined Anthropic seem happy, according to CEO 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 we could join forces with a great team and accelerate that vision into reality,” she said of joining Anthropic. “The decision became an easy one.”