Anthropic Acquires Vercept to Enhance AI Capabilities

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly.VERCEPT ACQUISITION:Anthropic announced, "People are using Claude for increasingly complex work-writing and running code across entire repositories, synthesizing research from dozens of sources, and managing workflows that span multiple tools and teams. Computer use enables Claude to do all of that inside live applications, the way a person at a keyboard would. That means Claude can take on multi-step tasks in live applications, and solve problems impossible with code alone. Today, we're announcing that Anthropic has acquired Vercept to help us push those capabilities further. Vercept was built around a clear thesis: making AI genuinely useful for completing complex tasks requires solving hard perception and interaction problems. The Vercept team-including co-founders Kiana Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick-have spent years thinking carefully about how AI systems can see and act within the same software humans use every day. That expertise maps directly onto some of the hardest problems we're working on at Anthropic. Vercept will wind down its external product in the coming weeks and join Anthropic in pushing the frontiers of computer use. This acquisition follows the recent launch of Claude Sonnet 4.6, which shows a major improvement in computer use skills: on OSWorld, a widely-used evaluation for AI computer use, our Sonnet models went from under 15% in late 2024, when we first released computer use, to 72.5% today. Sonnet 4.6 is now approaching human-level performance on tasks like navigating complex spreadsheets and completing web forms across browser tabs. Vercept is the latest team we've brought into Anthropic, following the acquisition of Bun. We look for teams whose technical ambitions match ours, whose work advances our capabilities, and whose approach to building AI is grounded in the same principles of safety and rigor that guide everything we do."AI SAFEGUARDS:The DoD told Anthropic it will invoke the Defense Production Act or label Anthropic a "supply chain risk," if not given unfettered Claude access by Friday, Dave Lawler and Mari Curi of Axios.PUBLIC LISTING:VoltaGrid, a startup that offers tech companies a shortcut to the energy needed to run AI systems, is exploring ways to raise billions of dollars to sustain its growth, Bloomberg's Dawn Lim, Brody Ford, and Ryan Gould. The maker of gas-powered microgrids for rapid data-center deployments is weighing an initial public offering and also has engaged with private equity firms about a potential sale, according to people familiar with the matter. Blackstone, and BlackRockare among firms that have discussed buying or investing in VoltaGrid, said the people. A potential deal could value the company at more than $10B, one of the people said.SEEKING LOAN:CoreWeaveis seeking an $8.5B loan from banks, backed by a contract Metasigned last year to pay CoreWeave up to $14.2B for its services, and a separate agreement valued at more than $5B, Bloomberg's Bailey Lipschultz and Paula Seligson. The loan is expected to close in March and would be supported by Meta's blue-chip profile, which is expected to result in an investment-grade rating and lower borrowing costs for CoreWeave, according to people familiar with the matter.AI TO TRACK MISCONDUCT:Deutsche Bankand General Dynamicsare looking to AI to bolster trading surveillance and track potential misconduct, William Shaw of Bloomberg. The lender is working with GoogleCloud to develop a model that will spot anomalies in orders, trader, and market moves, Reuters adds, citing Bernd Leukert, head of technology, data and innovation at Deutsche Bank.