AI Startup Adept Secures $350M to Develop Intelligent Software Collaboration
In a clear indication of the insatiable venture capital hunger for artificial intelligence, Adept, an innovative startup focused on facilitating human-computer collaboration to tackle challenges, announced securing $350 million in a Series B funding round. The round was co-led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital, with participation from Addition, Greylock, Atlassian Ventures, Microsoft, Nvidia, Workday Ventures, Caterina Fake, Frontiers Capital, PSP Growth, SV Angel, and A.Capital. With a reported valuation of at least $1 billion, the latest funding brings Adept’s total capital to $415 million.
Adept’s ambitious goal is to develop an “AI teammate” capable of utilizing a broad range of software tools and APIs. Contrasting with startups like OpenAI and Stability AI, which generate text or images, Adept examines how individuals interact with computers, specifically web browsing and software navigation, to train an AI model capable of transforming textual instructions into digital actions. Adept’s lean team of 25 employees is working on the minimum viable product (MVP), ACT-1, which performs tasks like importing LinkedIn URLs into recruitment software. The MVP, which will soon be available on mobile devices, currently operates as an overlay window on existing applications like Google Chrome or Salesforce.
The potential of ACT-1 to enhance various software applications has drawn strategic investors such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Atlassian, and Workday. Deep Nishar of General Catalyst remarked, “Adept… possesses a depth of expertise to deliver a commercial product that pushes the generative AI frontier beyond text and image modalities into the practical realm of knowledge worker actions. Excitingly, ACT-1 has the potential to lower the barrier to entry within the enterprise workforce and thus may yield greater inclusive prosperity.”
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