Foundry, the London-based developer of visual effects and animation software including the Nuke compositing platform, said on 18 February 2026 that it had completed its acquisition of Griptape, a Seattle startup that builds software for orchestrating AI models and agents. Terms were not disclosed.
Foundry said it would keep developing Griptape's products and connect them to its own creative tools, starting with Nuke, so that artists can use output from a range of AI models without leaving the software they already work in. The company described Griptape as a key part of an AI-first production pipeline it is building for its customers.
Griptape's founder and chief executive, Kyle Roche, was quoted in the announcement. GeekWire reported that the startup's staff would join Foundry.
What Griptape built
Griptape was founded in Seattle in 2023 by former Amazon Web Services staff, AWN reported. It started with an open-source Python framework for building generative AI applications and agents, which GeekWire said it initially pitched as an enterprise alternative to frameworks such as LangChain.
The company later added Griptape Nodes, a visual, node-based tool that lets users build AI workflows without writing code. It runs in a browser or as a Windows application, in the cloud or on a company's own servers. A third component, Griptape Engine, runs the workflows. The framework and engine are currently released under the Apache 2.0 open-source licence, and Foundry said it would assess how to keep offering open access alongside commercial features.
Griptape is model-agnostic. Foundry listed integrations with models from Google, Black Forest Labs, ByteDance, OpenAI, Alibaba, ElevenLabs, Topaz Labs, Luma, Rodin and Kuaishou, as well as models hosted on Hugging Face and custom diffusion models. It also supports the Model Context Protocol for agent workflows that reach into Maya, Blender, Nuke and Flow Production Tracking. Griptape says its software is already used by several production studios, though none were named.
“Foundry is the natural home for Griptape. Their deep history in VFX and Animation combined with their industry-leading products, existing AI capabilities, and incorporation of AI into core workflows, provides the perfect platform to scale our technology and reach every major studio globally.”
Why Foundry is buying
Foundry has made creative software for the media and entertainment industry for about 30 years, according to AWN, and its tools have been used on Academy Award-winning visual effects films. It began adding machine learning features to its products in 2021 with CopyCat, a tool inside Nuke. Besides Nuke, its product line includes Mari, Katana, Modo and Flix.
Foundry said Griptape's platform gives controlled access to open-source and commercial models inside secure workflows built for those security and traceability requirements, and lets teams create and manage programmable agents across a pipeline.
Jody Madden, Foundry's chief executive, said the deal would give customers tools to realise their creative vision more efficiently while keeping control, and called Griptape a critical piece of the foundation for Foundry's roadmap.
The founders and the funding
Roche spent more than eight years at AWS and previously founded 2lemetry, an internet-of-things startup that Amazon bought in 2015, GeekWire reported. His co-founder, former chief technology officer Vasily Vasinov, left Griptape in 2025.
Griptape raised a $12.5 million seed round in September 2023. GeekWire named the Seattle-area firm Fuse, Acequia Capital, Crosslink Capital, Range Ventures and Peterson Ventures among its investors. The startup did not disclose any later rounds or a valuation, and neither side said how much Foundry paid.
What happens to users
Foundry did not announce changes to Griptape's current products or pricing. It said it would focus development on visual effects and animation pipelines and on integration with Nuke and its other applications, so that artists reach AI models from inside the tools they already use rather than switching between separate applications.
Griptape's Python architecture was designed to fit existing studio infrastructure, including production management systems and hand-offs to render farms, AWN reported. Licensing remains the open question for users of the open-source framework. The company said only that it would assess how to provide open access alongside commercial features, without giving a timetable.
