Amazon in talks to buy Decart for $7 billion — the startup Anthropic walked away from, 75% pricier since May
Amazon is negotiating to acquire AI startup Decart for about $7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on October 11, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May, so the price is about 75% higher less than five months later. Anthropic explored a roughly $6 billion deal in August and dropped it in September after due diligence, and Nvidia had also held talks. Amazon's interest centers on Decart's Optimization Stack, software that lets the same AI workload run on Nvidia GPUs, Google TPUs or Amazon Trainium without being rewritten. Talks could still collapse, and neither company has confirmed them.
The three lines
- Talks — Amazon negotiating to buy Decart for ~$7 billion (WSJ, October 11, 2026); ~75% above May's ~$4 billion valuation
- Earlier suitors — Anthropic explored ~$6 billion in August, walked away in September; Nvidia also held talks and invested in May
- What Amazon wants — DOS, software that moves AI workloads across GPUs, TPUs and Trainium, shoring up Trainium's weak software ecosystem
Key questions
- What is Decart AI
- **A 2023-founded AI startup making chip-optimization software plus real-time video and world-simulation models.** | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Founded | 2023 | | HQ | San Francisco (offices in New York, Tel Aviv) | | Founders | Dean Leitersdorf (CEO), Orian Leitersdorf (CTO), Moshe Shalev | | Core product | DOS — run AI workloads on GPU, TPU or Trainium | | Models | Lucy (real-time video editing), Oasis (simulated environments for robots, self-driving) | | May round | $300 million, ~$4 billion valuation, Nvidia joined |
- Why does Amazon want to buy Decart
- **To make other companies' AI workloads run easily on its own Trainium chips.** | Amazon's problem | What Decart offers | |---|---| | Winning Trainium customers | DOS moves Nvidia-built workloads without a rewrite | | Chip tuning time | Months to weeks (SiliconANGLE) | | Existing ties | Early Trainium3 access in 2025; strategic customer deal in May 2026 | | Video and world models | Lucy, Oasis |
- Why did Anthropic walk away from Decart
- **Anthropic explored a ~$6 billion deal in August and dropped it in September after due diligence; no reason was given.** | Date | Suitor | Detail | |---|---|---| | May 2026 | — | $300M raise, ~$4B valuation | | Aug. 2026 | Anthropic | ~$6B deal explored (Bloomberg) | | Sept. 2026 | Anthropic | Walked away after due diligence | | Undated | Nvidia | Advanced talks reported (Calcalist) | | Oct. 11, 2026 | Amazon | ~$7B talks (WSJ) |
Amazon wants the company Anthropic put down in September — at a higher price. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 11, 2026 that Amazon is in talks to acquire AI startup Decart for about $7 billion. Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion when it raised $300 million in May (PitchBook), so the price would be up about 75% in under five months. The Journal said a deal could come soon, unless talks collapse or another bidder steps in.
The deal signals that the AI acquisition race is shifting from models to the software that runs models cheaply on any chip. Where Nvidia's reported talks with Reflection AI targeted a model maker, this one targets the layer between chips and models.
1. What Decart makes
| Product | What it does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| DOS (Decart Optimization Stack) | Runs the same AI workload on Nvidia GPUs, Google TPUs or Amazon Trainium without a rebuild | A bridge out of Nvidia's CUDA software lock-in |
| Lucy | Real-time video editing model | Backed by Nvidia |
| Oasis | Generates simulated worlds for training robots and self-driving systems | A "world model" |
Founded in 2023 by Israeli founders, Decart is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York and Tel Aviv. At AWS re:Invent in December 2025, CEO Dean Leitersdorf said Trainium delivered "up to 4x faster frame generation at half the cost of GPUs." AWS had given Decart early access to Trainium3 in 2025, and in May 2026 Amazon became a strategic customer under a joint go-to-market agreement. The two already work together.
2. How the price climbed
| Date | Event | Price / value |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Founded | — |
| 2025 | Early Trainium3 access from AWS | — |
| May 2026 | $300M round led by Radical Ventures; Nvidia joins | ~$4 billion |
| Aug. 2026 | Anthropic explores acquisition (Bloomberg) | ~$6 billion |
| Sept. 2026 | Anthropic walks away after due diligence | — |
| Oct. 11, 2026 | Amazon in talks (WSJ) | ~$7 billion |
Anthropic spent weeks on due diligence and gave no reason for pulling out. Nvidia reportedly held advanced talks too before higher bids arrived (Calcalist). That a model company, a chip company and a cloud company all chased the same startup says a lot about where this technology sits.
3. Why Amazon needs it
| Amazon's situation | What Decart could fix |
|---|---|
| Trainium is cheaper, but its software ecosystem trails Nvidia's | Lower cost of porting Nvidia workloads to Trainium |
| AWS customers want to mix chips | One stack across GPU, TPU, Trainium |
| Rivals are scaling their own chips (Microsoft Maia 300, Google TPU) | A head start as the chip race becomes a software race |
| Demand for video and robotics AI | Lucy and Oasis models |
Building a custom chip is hard; getting everyone else's software to run well on it is harder. That shared industry headache is why Decart's price has jumped.
4. What remains unconfirmed
- Deal status: Still talks. Neither Amazon nor Decart has confirmed.
- Anthropic's reason: Undisclosed. Amazon is one of Anthropic's biggest investors, which makes the sequence notable.
- Performance claims: Figures like 8x speed and 100x cost efficiency are self-reported and hard to verify (Dealroom).
- Antitrust: A $7 billion Big Tech acquisition could draw US competition review; scope unknown.
Sources
- Reuters via KSL — Amazon in talks to buy AI startup Decart for around $7 billion, WSJ reports
- Tech Funding News — Amazon in talks to buy Decart for $7B, weeks after Anthropic walked away from a $6B deal
- News Tribune — Amazon in talks to buy AI startup Decart for around $7 billion
- Pulse 2.0 — Amazon Reportedly In Talks To Acquire AI Startup Decart