UiPath (NYSE: PATH) experienced a 3.6% decline in its share price on Wednesday after Anthropic disclosed that it had acquired Vercept, a company working on AI perception and human-like interaction with software applications.
Anthropic described Vercept as a developer of technology that allows AI systems to navigate and perform tasks inside live software applications in ways resembling human interaction. The company said the acquisition is intended to advance Claude Sonnet 4.6’s computer use capabilities - the set of functions that enable the AI assistant to carry out multi-step tasks within active applications.
In its announcement, Anthropic highlighted performance gains for Claude Sonnet 4.6 on OSWorld, a benchmark for assessing computer use. The firm reported that the model achieved a 72.5% score on that evaluation, a notable increase from a performance level of under 15% in late 2024.
The Vercept team - including co-founders Kiana Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick - will join Anthropic to continue work on computer use technology. Anthropic said Vercept will wind down its external product over the coming weeks as the integration proceeds.
Anthropic characterized the enhanced computer use capabilities as enabling Claude Sonnet 4.6 to approach human-level performance on tasks such as navigating complex spreadsheets and completing web forms that span multiple browser tabs. The company also described computer use as enabling the assistant to undertake more complex work, including writing and running code across repositories and managing workflows that involve multiple tools and teams.
The Vercept acquisition follows Anthropic’s recent purchase of Bun, part of an ongoing sequence of hires and acquisitions Anthropic says are intended to strengthen technical capabilities.
The market reaction for UiPath reflects investor sensitivity to competitive developments in the automation and enterprise software space. Anthropic’s statement positioned the Vercept technology as operating in the same automation domain where UiPath provides products and services.
Details on integration timelines beyond the wind-down of Vercept’s external product and the precise operational impact on competing vendors were not provided in Anthropic’s announcement.