Anthropic Acquires Stainless, Gains Edge

Anthropic announced on Monday its acquisition of Stainless, a startup founded by former Stripe engineer Alex Rattray. Stainless's software is widely utilized by rival AI organizations, including OpenAI and Google.

The acquisition aims to remove a key infrastructure supplier from Anthropic's competitors. The company plans to discontinue all hosted Stainless products, including its SDK generator. Customers will maintain ownership of their generated SDKs and possess full rights to modify them.

Stainless, established in 2022, gained prominence in the AI industry by automating the generation and upkeep of software development kits (SDKs). These tools enable developers to interact with APIs more efficiently.

The technology developed by Rattray can convert API specifications into production-ready SDKs across multiple programming languages. This automation is highly valued by companies developing AI agents that connect to external software for task completion.

Stainless software has been integral to generating every official Anthropic SDK since the early stages of its API. Rattray expressed that Anthropic was an early supporter, making the integration of their teams a natural progression.