Anthropic's $6B Decart talks signal pre-IPO AI M&A push

For markets investors, the reported $6 billion price tag is a data point in AI's infrastructure arms race: Anthropic, preparing for an IPO, is paying up for chip-efficiency software rather than adding more GPUs. Decart's almost $4 billion May valuation means a roughly 50% premium if talks complete, while the deal would be Anthropic's largest known acquisition.

Anthropic is reportedly in discussions to acquire Decart AI for approximately $6 billion, according to people familiar with the private negotiations cited in reports from The Economic Times and Seeking Alpha. The transaction has not been signed, and the sources caution that talks could still fall apart. If completed, the deal would be Anthropic's largest known acquisition and would land just as the company prepares for a widely anticipated initial public offering. Representatives for Anthropic and Decart declined to comment, leaving the report without on-the-record confirmation.

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That round valued Decart at almost $4 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, up from $3.1 billion in August 2025.

Decart is not a conventional chatbot or model company. Its core technology reduces the cost of training AI models by making chips operate more efficiently, a capability that directly addresses one of the largest unsolved cost problems in AI infrastructure. According to a person familiar with the matter, the software could help Anthropic's existing computing infrastructure absorb more demand without a proportional increase in hardware spending. The Decart team would join Anthropic's inference and performance organization, a signal that Anthropic is buying operational expertise as much as product. The startup also works on generative video through world models that can modify live video feeds instantly, an area that demands tightly optimized inference and indicates high-quality infrastructure talent.

Financially, Decart has been on a steep ascent. The startup said in May that it raised $300 million in a round led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, and Adobe Ventures; earlier investors Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures also joined. That round valued Decart at almost $4 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, up from $3.1 billion in August 2025. A $6 billion acquisition would therefore represent a premium of roughly 50% over the May valuation and nearly double the August 2025 mark. The company was founded in 2023 by three Israeli engineers: brothers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev. Moving from founding to a $6 billion exit in about three years would place Decart among the fastest-scaling infrastructure startups of the current AI cycle.

The strategic context is defined by extraordinary capital intensity. OpenAI and Anthropic have each committed to spend tens, and potentially hundreds, of billions of dollars on data centers filled with expensive chips. The firms increasingly blend hardware from multiple suppliers to meet demand for model training and inference. In that environment, software that improves chip utilization can have an outsized effect on unit economics. Anthropic rarely makes large acquisitions, instead spending heavily on computing power to develop products and serve customers. A Decart deal would be a notable shift toward buying efficiency rather than renting or building more raw compute, and it could help Anthropic stretch the value of its existing and future data center capacity.