Anthropic in Talks to Acquire AI Startup Decart for $6 Billion

Anthropic is in advanced negotiations to acquire the Israeli AI startup Decart AI for approximately $6 billion, according to reports published August 13, 2026.

The potential acquisition would be Anthropic's largest to date. Neither company has provided an official comment on the negotiations, which could still fall through.

Decart AI was founded in 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf, and Moshe Shalev. The startup specializes in inference optimization software that makes AI models run faster and more efficiently across different hardware architectures, including Nvidia chips, TPUs, and Amazon's custom silicon.

Decart's product portfolio includes DOS, an inference and training stack designed to speed up AI agents and reasoning models; Lucy, a world model that processes live video to generate real-time simulations; and Oasis, a world model for creating synthetic environments used in robotics and autonomous driving.

The startup raised $300 million in a May 2026 funding round led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia and Adobe Ventures, valuing the company at approximately $4 billion. The reported $6 billion acquisition price represents a significant premium over that valuation.

Anthropic's primary motivation for the deal is to reduce the substantial computing costs associated with training and running its Claude AI models. By integrating Decart's efficiency technology, Anthropic aims to improve its cost narrative for potential investors ahead of a possible IPO, which some reports suggest could occur as early as October 2026.

The acquisition talks come as Anthropic has been aggressively expanding its compute partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Google, and potentially Meta to address capacity constraints.