Amazon In Talks To Buy Israeli AI Startup Decart For Around $7 Billion; Anthropic Decided Against Acquiring For $6 Billion Last Month

Amazon is reportedly in talks to acquire the AI startup Decart in a deal that could be valued at around $7 billion. A deal could be struck soon if the talks do not collapse or a rival bidder does not emerge. Reports suggest an agreement could be wrapped up in the coming days.

Anthropic walked away last month

WSJ reports that Amazon's move follows an earlier approach from another AI company. Anthropic explored acquiring Decart last month for potentially $6 billion, but decided last month not to go ahead after conducting due diligence. Reports in August had also named SpaceX and Nebius as possible suitors, and said Nvidia had held advanced talks that fell apart after higher offers emerged.

Steep jump from May valuation

Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May, the Journal said, citing PitchBook data. That was when it raised $300 million in a round led by Radical Ventures, with Nvidia joining as a new investor. A $7 billion price would be roughly 75 percent above that valuation, reached less than five months ago. By one report's count, the round took the Israeli company's total funding past $450 million.

What is Decart?

Decart's Lucy model, which is backed by Nvidia, can edit live video in real time, according to the company's website. It has also developed Oasis, a model that generates simulated environments to train and test robotics and autonomous-driving systems. SiliconANGLE reported that Decart has also built software that makes it easier for developers to run AI models on different processors. This is a valuable capability as companies compete for computing capacity.

How will Decart be useful to Amazon?

Decart's software could be useful to Amazon Web Services, which offers its own custom AI processors, called Trainium3, for training AI models. The outlet added that Decart reportedly got early access to Trainium3 last year, after a meeting with senior AWS engineers.