Adept
Adept emerged from stealth in 2022 with $65 million from founders David Luan (former OpenAI VP of Engineering), along with Google Brain researchers Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar.
Profile
Build AI agents that automate repetitive software tasks by understanding and interacting with enterprise applications visually.
Adept emerged from stealth in 2022 with $65 million from founders David Luan (former OpenAI VP of Engineering), along with Google Brain researchers Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar. The company's mission was ambitious: train AI systems to automate any software process by learning how humans interact with digital tools. In March 2023, Adept raised $350 million in Series B funding at a $1 billion valuation from General Catalyst, Spark Capital, Addition, Greylock, Atlassian Ventures, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others, bringing total raised to $415 million.
The company developed ACT-1, a multimodal transformer designed to observe screens and execute actions through clicks and keyboard input, alongside Fuyu-8B and Fuyu-Heavy, visual understanding models optimized for UI comprehension. However, product commercialization proved difficult. In June 2024, Amazon licensed Adept's technology and hired away the entire co-founder group—David Luan, Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen, and Kelsey Szot—to staff its new AGI SF Lab.
The Federal Trade Commission launched an informal inquiry into the deal structure, questioning whether it resembled a hidden acquisition. Adept did not shut down. Zach Brock, the company's head of engineering with over 15 years of product and leadership experience, assumed the CEO role, with Tim Weingarten remaining as head of product.
About 20 employees stayed. The company refocused entirely on agentic solutions, pivoting away from foundational model development to integrate its existing models and proprietary datasets with available LLMs for enterprise automation. By 2024, Adept reported $75 million in annual recurring revenue. Under Brock's leadership, Adept now positions itself as a partner-driven platform for bringing agent capabilities to existing enterprise tools rather than competing directly with Amazon on foundational research.
Who buys this
- Finance and accounting teams automating data entry, invoice processing, and reconciliation workflows
- Sales and CRM operations teams automating Salesforce, HubSpot, and pipeline management tasks
- Enterprise data teams automating spreadsheet, database, and analytics workflows
- Administrative and back-office teams automating document processing and administrative tasks
- Supply chain and logistics teams automating order processing and inventory management
Strengths and what to watch
Strengths
- Founders with deep AI research pedigree: ex-OpenAI VP and Google Brain researchers who raised $415M from top-tier investors
- Proprietary multimodal models (Fuyu family) optimized for UI understanding and pixel-level screen interaction
- Operational resilience post-exodus: maintained core team and $75M ARR after losing co-founders to Amazon
Watch for
- Leadership stability: Zach Brock became CEO with limited public track record; one source indicated he moved to OpenAI, suggesting potential instability
- Dependence on Amazon relationship: Adept is now a technology partner to Amazon, not a competitor, while Amazon's own AGI group (led by David Luan) may cannibalize Adept's market
- FTC scrutiny: The June 2024 Amazon deal faced Federal Trade Commission inquiry as a potential hidden acquisition, setting uncertain regulatory precedent for similar talent licensing deals
- Unproven enterprise product-market fit: ACT-1 remains in beta after two years; pre-Amazon pivot suggested struggle to commercialize technology
Recent moves
Key Information
- Industry
- Commercial AI Research
- Founded
- 2022
- Headquarters
- United States
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Adept AI?
Adept AI is a company building agents that automate repetitive software tasks by using visual understanding and AI. The platform learns how humans interact with digital tools and can automate processes across enterprise applications like Salesforce and spreadsheets without custom code or APIs.
Who founded Adept and how much funding did they raise?
Adept was founded by David Luan, former OpenAI VP of Engineering, along with Google Brain researchers Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar. The company raised $415 million total: $65 million in seed funding and $350 million in Series B from investors including Microsoft, Nvidia, and General Catalyst.
What was the Amazon-Adept deal in 2024?
In June 2024, Amazon licensed Adept's technology and hired its entire co-founder group—David Luan, Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen, and Kelsey Szot—to lead Amazon's new AGI SF Lab. Adept did not shut down; about 20 employees remained, with Zach Brock assuming the CEO role.
Is Adept still operating after the Amazon deal?
Yes. After the founders left for Amazon, Adept refocused entirely on agentic solutions for enterprise customers. The company pivoted away from foundational model development to integrate its multimodal models and datasets with available large language models. By 2024, Adept reported $75 million in annual recurring revenue.
Why did the FTC investigate Amazon's Adept deal?
The Federal Trade Commission investigated Amazon's Adept deal because its structure—with all co-founders moving to Amazon while it licensed Adept's models and datasets—resembled a hidden acquisition. The FTC questioned whether it was effectively an undisclosed takeover, setting precedent for how talent licensing deals would be regulated.
What is Adept's ACT-1 model?
ACT-1 is Adept's flagship multimodal AI model designed to observe screens and execute software tasks through clicks and keyboard input. The model learns to automate workflows by understanding visual interfaces. However, ACT-1 remained in beta after two years, indicating challenges with product commercialization before the Amazon deal.
How Adept compares
Direct head-to-head against 2 competitors. Picked by 7wData.
Adept
- Positioning
- Build AI agents that automate repetitive software tasks by understanding and interacting with enterprise applications visually.
- Customer segments
- Finance and accounting teams automating data entry, invoice processing, and reconciliation workflows
- Strengths
- Founders with deep AI research pedigree: ex-OpenAI VP and Google Brain researchers who raised $415M from top-tier investors
- Watch for
- Leadership stability: Zach Brock became CEO with limited public track record; one source indicated he moved to OpenAI, suggesting potential instability
- Recent moves
- Sramana Mitra's analysis of Amazon's Adept AI deal
UiPath
- Positioning
- Largest RPA vendor by market share, repositioning as an enterprise orchestration platform for multi-agent workflow automation with governance controls.
- Customer segments
- Large enterprise IT and operations buyers in financial services, healthcare, government, and retail requiring auditable, repeatable automation at scale.
- Strengths
- Seven consecutive years as Gartner RPA Magic Quadrant Leader, with proven orchestration depth on SAP, Oracle, and legacy mainframe environments.
- Watch for
- Minimum license spend raised to approximately $63,000 in August 2025, blocking pilot-phase and mid-market entry and driving churn at contract renewal.
- Recent moves
- Acquired WorkFusion (February 2026), integrating pre-built financial crime compliance agents (AML, KYC) into its orchestration platform.
Automation Anywhere
- Positioning
- Enterprise RPA vendor pivoting to agentic process automation, targeting autonomous operation of core business workflows across finance, healthcare, and IT.
- Customer segments
- Large enterprise IT, finance, and operations buyers in financial services, healthcare, and technology, with acknowledged weaker mid-market traction.
- Strengths
- Cloud-native Automation 360 platform, purpose-built for multi-tenant deployment, unlike legacy on-premise-first RPA tools requiring retrofitted cloud add-ons.
- Watch for
- Enterprise contracts reach $500K annually, with customers flagging pricing opacity and confusing tier structures as top barriers to renewal.
- Recent moves
- November 2025: acquired Aisera (AI agents for ITSM, HR, customer service), adding 100 AI engineers and expanding into conversational automation.
Sources
- techcrunch.com — Series B funding round of $350M in March 2023, $1B valuation, investors (General Catalyst, Spark Capital, Addition, Greylock, Atlassian Ventures, Microsoft, Nvidia, Workday Ventures, etc.), total funding of $415M
- techcrunch.com — June 2024 Amazon deal: hired founders (David Luan, Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen, Kelsey Szot), licensing of Adept technology, Zach Brock became CEO, about 20 employees stayed
- www.cnbc.com — Amazon licensing deal details, non-exclusive technology license for multimodal models and datasets, leadership transitions
- techcrunch.com — Amazon AGI SF Lab formation with David Luan, research direction on digital and physical world agents, regulatory context of the deal
- www.cnbc.com — Federal Trade Commission inquiry into Amazon-Adept deal, regulatory scrutiny of the transaction structure
- www.marketscreener.com — Zach Brock appointment as CEO, background in product and engineering leadership
- getlatka.com — $75M ARR reported for 2024