Full Breakdown
Anthropic in Advanced Talks to Acquire Israeli AI Startup Decart for Roughly $6 Billion
8/13/2026, 8:33:03 PM
Core Event
People familiar with the negotiations say Anthropic PBC is in early-stage talks to buy Decart AI, an Israeli artificial-intelligence infrastructure startup, for an estimated $6 billion. The deal would be Anthropic’s largest acquisition to date and its first purchase of an Israeli-based company. Both firms have declined to comment, and the talks could still collapse.
Background & Context
Decart was founded in 2023 by Israeli engineers Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev. The startup builds a Decart Optimization Stack (DOS) that improves chip-level efficiency for AI training and inference across Nvidia GPUs, Google TPUs and Amazon Trainium processors. Its portfolio also includes the Lucy video model, which edits live video in real time, and the Oasis world-model platform for simulating environments used in robotics and autonomous-driving research.
Anthropic, the creator of the Claude chatbot, has been expanding its compute capacity ahead of a planned initial public offering. The company has recently filed a confidential S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and has committed tens of billions of dollars to data-center infrastructure and custom-chip development.
Deal Valuation and Financial Details
- Funding history: Decart raised a $300 million Series B round in May, led by Radical Ventures with participation from Nvidia, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Adobe Ventures. The round valued Decart at nearly $4 billion, up from about $3.1 billion in August 2025.
- Proposed price: The $6 billion offer represents roughly a 50 % premium over the most recent valuation.
- Competing interest: Reports indicate that Nvidia, SpaceX and Amazon have also explored acquiring Decart. Elon Musk later labeled the SpaceX rumor “fake news” on his X platform.
Strategic Rationale
Anthropic faces a “compute arms race” in which demand for Claude is outpacing the available hardware capacity. Decart’s efficiency-focused software could enable Anthropic to extract more performance from existing chips, lowering training and inference costs. The acquisition would also bring Decart’s video-generation expertise into Anthropic’s inference and performance organization, potentially expanding Claude’s multimodal capabilities.
Official Statements & Responses
Conflicting Reports & Gaps
- Some sources describe Decart as “Nvidia-backed,” while others emphasize its broader chip-agnostic stack.
- The extent of Decart’s revenue generation and profitability was not disclosed, leaving uncertainty about the financial justification for a $6 billion price.
- Competing suitor claims vary: Bloomberg and Reuters cite Nvidia, SpaceX and Amazon; Calcalist noted that Nvidia’s negotiations had reached an advanced stage before other parties entered the process.
Verbatim Quotes
- “Once systems can understand and operate within the physical world, the range of what becomes possible expands dramatically — from robotics and autonomous systems to entirely new forms of commerce and live experience,” — Orian Leitersdorf, co-founder of Decart AI
- “The company is looking very, very closely at the Israeli market,” — Guy Fighel, partner and head of AI at Hetz Ventures
What's Next
Anthropic’s filing of an S-1 suggests a public listing could occur in the coming months. If the Decart acquisition closes, the combined team is expected to join Anthropic’s inference and performance division, positioning the company to address scaling challenges ahead of its IPO. The negotiations are ongoing, and no definitive timeline has been announced.
