Adept Raises $350M Series B at a Roughly $1B Valuation — As Key Members Depart
Adept announced it had raised $350 million in a Series B round co-led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital. Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Atlassian Ventures also participated, with reports putting the company’s valuation at roughly $1 billion.
Details
- Amount raised and key investors: $350 million co-led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital. Addition and Greylock returned from the previous round, joined by strategic investors including Microsoft, NVIDIA, Atlassian Ventures, and Workday Ventures
- Use of funds: Earmarked for productization, model training and tuning, and headcount growth
- Total funding raised: Combined with the $65 million Series A, this brought total funding to over $400 million in less than a year
- Concurrent developments: While the exact timing was not disclosed, multiple reports indicate that co-founder and Chief Scientist Ashish Vaswani and CTO Niki Parmar left Adept around this time and went on to co-found a new company, Essential AI, in 2023 (the precise departure date has never been officially confirmed)
What happened next
The large funding round cemented Adept’s status as a prominent AI startup, but the situation would change dramatically over the following year or so. In June 2024, core members including co-founder and CEO David Luan moved to Amazon in what amounted to a “reverse acqui-hire” deal, licensing the company’s technology.