Anthropic Acquires Computer-Use AI Startup Vercept to Enhance Claude's Agent Capabilities
The AI agent race just got more competitive. Anthropic has acquired Vercept, a Seattle-based startup specializing in desktop “computer use” AI — the ability for an agent to see and control software on your screen just like a human would. The move signals that Anthropic isn’t content letting rivals like OpenAI or Microsoft dominate the agentic interface layer. What Is Vercept? Vercept was a nine-person team built around a deceptively hard problem: teaching AI to operate software through visual perception rather than APIs. Instead of integrating with an app’s code, Vercept’s tech watches the screen, reads UI elements, and acts — clicking, typing, navigating — exactly as a human operator would. ...