AI ‘Agent’ Startup Adept Has Talked to Potential Buyers, Including Meta

The leaders of Adept, a 2-year-old artificial intelligence startup run by former OpenAI and Google AI developers, held talks in recent months about a possible sale or strategic partnership with large tech companies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations. One company Adept spoke to was Facebook owner Meta Platforms, this person said, though an acquisition is unlikely.

The effort by Adept, which investors valued at more than $1 billion last year, points to the pressure on a growing number of startups in the field. Even those that quickly raised hundreds of millions of dollars, such as Adept, face questions due to the heavy costs of training and running AI models, as well as rising competition from companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI.