Amazon reportedly in talks to buy AI startup Decart for $7B
Anthropic walked away in September. Now Amazon wants the Israeli startup to break Nvidia's grip on AI compute.
Business · Source: Reuters (via SRN News)
What happened
Amazon is reportedly in talks to acquire Israeli artificial intelligence startup Decart for approximately $7 billion. The Wall Street Journal broke the news on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. This potential acquisition comes just one month after Anthropic walked away from a similar deal. Anthropic had explored a $6 billion purchase in August but abandoned the transaction in September after completing due diligence.
Founded in 2023 by brothers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf alongside Moshe Shalev, Decart builds technology that makes AI models run more efficiently. Their core software allows AI workloads to switch easily between chips from different manufacturers. They also build consumer-facing generative AI models. Their Lucy model, backed by Nvidia, edits live video in real time. Their Oasis model generates simulated interactive environments to train and test robotics and autonomous driving systems.
Amazon and Decart already share a close business relationship. Amazon Web Services serves as a strategic customer for the startup. According to reports, AWS even gave Decart early access to its Trainium3 AI chips in 2025. Decart previously raised $300 million in May at a nearly $4 billion valuation. That funding round was led by Radical Ventures and included Nvidia as a new investor. The company has raised about $450 million in total.
Key facts
- $7 billion — Reported valuation of the potential Amazon acquisition
- $6 billion — Potential value of the abandoned Anthropic deal in August
- $4 billion — Decart valuation during its May funding round
- $300 million — Amount Decart raised in May led by Radical Ventures
Why it matters
The AI infrastructure war is shifting rapidly from simply buying chips to optimizing how those chips are used. Decart develops software that helps companies extract more computing power from their existing hardware. If Amazon integrates this technology deeply into AWS, builders will be able to run large models across different processors much more efficiently. This directly lowers cloud computing costs for startups. It also reduces the technical friction of moving away from expensive Nvidia hardware.
This reported deal signals a massive strategic push by Amazon to make its custom Trainium chips the default alternative to Nvidia processors. By owning the software layer that makes chip-switching seamless, Amazon makes its entire cloud platform significantly more attractive to AI developers. The challenge for tech giants is no longer just obtaining silicon. It is using expensive computing resources efficiently. Amazon wants to turn a hardware bottleneck into a software advantage.
For builders
Hardware independence is the new moat
Startups building infrastructure that breaks vendor lock-in are currently highly valuable. If you can help enterprise companies switch seamlessly between Nvidia GPUs and custom cloud silicon, big tech buyers will pay a massive premium for your technology.
Cloud providers want full stack control
Amazon is clearly buying software capabilities to help sell its proprietary hardware. Builders relying on AWS infrastructure might soon get access to native tools that make running AI models on Trainium chips cheaper and easier than using standard GPUs.
Due diligence kills massive deals
Anthropic walked away from a massive 6 billion dollar acquisition just last month after looking under the hood. Founders must keep their data rooms and technical claims completely bulletproof. Even top tier buyers will pull out late in the process if the reality does not match the pitch.
My take
Anthropic looked at Decart and saw a product, but Amazon looks at Decart and sees a weapon. I believe Amazon does not care about the video generation models or the robotics simulations. They want the underlying chip-switching software to break Nvidia's grip on their data centers and push builders onto their own Trainium silicon.
Original reporting: Reuters (via SRN News). This is my rewrite and opinion.