Anthropic reportedly is exploring a $6 billion acquisition of Nvidia-backed Decart AI ahead of its anticipated IPO.
Anthropic is in negotiations to acquire Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence startup Decart AI in a deal that could value the company at approximately $6 billion, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg. The discussions are ongoing and may not result in a transaction. If completed, this would represent Anthropic's largest acquisition to date, bringing Decart's AI infrastructure and world-model technology into one of the industry's foremost developers of frontier models.
Decart's capabilities align with Anthropic's pressing needs as demand for Claude accelerates and the computational costs of developing and operating advanced AI systems continue to mount. The startup builds software designed to optimize AI training and inference across multiple chip architectures, enabling companies to extract greater performance from expensive computing infrastructure. Decart's Optimization Stack (DOS) specifically targets workloads across processors from Nvidia, Amazon, and Google, making it simpler for AI developers to move workloads between different chips while reducing the technical complexity and costs associated with hardware switching.
Decart has attracted a diverse set of customers and investors despite the apparent paradox of its mission. Nvidia participated in the company's most recent funding round even though Decart's software facilitates running workloads on competing processors. Amazon has similarly become both a customer and a provider of chips to the startup. Decart raised $300 million in May in a funding round led by Radical Ventures, bringing total funding to over $450 million. That investment was valued the company at nearly $4 billion—meaning a $6 billion acquisition would represent a substantial premium just months after the latest financing. Additional investors in the round included Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, Adobe Ventures, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures.
Beyond infrastructure optimization, Decart is developing world models that generate and manipulate interactive representations of physical environments. Its Lucy system transforms live video in real time, allowing users to modify people, objects, backgrounds, and visual effects during capture or streaming. Decart positions Lucy for applications spanning e-commerce, advertising, live streaming, social platforms, and gaming. The company's Oasis model targets physical AI applications, including simulations potentially deployable in robotics and similar domains.
Decart was founded in 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf, and Moshe Shalev. If the acquisition proceeds, Decart employees would join Anthropic's inference and performance organization, integrating the startup's infrastructure expertise directly into the division responsible for efficiently operating Anthropic's AI models.
Anthropic's expansion reflects a broader competitive shift across the AI industry. Leading companies increasingly compete on inference efficiency and model cost alongside raw capability, investing heavily in Nvidia chips, data centers, and power infrastructure while seeking to accelerate inference and reduce per-query expenses. This pressure intensifies as lower-cost open-weight models gain adoption. U.S. AI companies face mounting competition from cheaper alternatives developed by Chinese firms including Moonshot AI and Z.ai, driving greater emphasis on efficiency and accessible models among American developers.