Anthropic has decided against acquiring AI startup Decart AI, ending months of talks over a deal that had been valued at roughly $6 billion (roughly Rs. 52,800 crore). Anthropic had been exploring the acquisition and had performed due diligence on Decart, but ultimately walked away.
Bloomberg reports that the two companies may still pursue other opportunities to collaborate going forward. In August, The Claude chatbot maker was reported to be in talks to buy Decart for about $6 billion, though nothing had been finalised at the time and there was a possibility the negotiations could collapse.
What does Decart do and why Anthropic wanted in?
Decart makes software designed to reduce the cost of training and running AI by helping chips operate more efficiently, an optimisation stack the company says helps AI developers extract maximum performance from every chip, across both training and inference. The rationale behind the mooted acquisition was to help Anthropic's existing computing infrastructure absorb greater demand.
Decart also builds 'world models' intended to simulate the physical world, aimed at applications such as autonomous driving and e-commerce. Its Lucy AI model can take live video of a person and generate a real-time, high-resolution video that makes it appear as though they are trying on a dress or bag - a capability e-commerce platform eBay, both an investor in and customer of Decart, has been using.
Anthropic's spending ahead of a planned IPO
Anthropic rarely makes large acquisitions, but has been ramping up spending on computing power to develop new products and serve customers ahead of a highly anticipated initial public offering. People familiar with the preparations have said the company is seeking to raise as much as SpaceX, or more, in its eventual listing.
Decart's rapid rise in valuation
Founded in 2023 by Israeli engineers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, Decart said in May it had raised $300 million in a funding round led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Adobe Ventures, alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Zeev Ventures. The round valued Decart at almost $4 billion, up sharply from $3.1 billion in August 2025, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Speaking at the Raise AI conference in Paris in July, Decart chief executive Dean Leitersdorf said the company trains its AI on text and millions of hours of video to model real-world physics, and that its technology is already being used for livestreaming on platforms including Twitch, TikTok and YouTube, by influencers such as CodeMiko, as well as by advertising companies.
