Amazon in Talks to Buy AI Startup Decart for Around $7 Billion, Reports Say
Amazon is in talks to acquire the artificial intelligence startup Decart in a deal that could be valued at around $7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The report, carried by Reuters, said a deal could happen soon if the talks do not fall apart. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report, and both Amazon and Decart declined to comment or did not respond.
Decart, founded in 2023 by three Israeli engineers, has built software that lets developers move AI workloads between chips from different vendors with minimal friction — a capability that has grown more valuable as enterprises look to reduce dependence on any single GPU supplier. Its Lucy model can edit live video in real time, while its Oasis model generates interactive simulations used to train and test robotics and autonomous-driving systems.
Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May, per PitchBook data cited by the Journal, and raised $300 million in a funding round led by Radical Ventures, with Nvidia joining as a new investor. Bloomberg previously reported that Anthropic explored acquiring Decart in August for a potential $6 billion but walked away after due diligence.
Why Amazon wants it
The logic is vertical integration. Amazon already designs its own AI silicon, including the Trainium line of chips, and rents it out through Amazon Web Services. Decart would hand the cloud giant a software layer purpose-built to bridge proprietary silicon and customer workloads — smoothing the path for enterprises that want AI compute without committing to a single chip vendor’s ecosystem, most notably Nvidia’s.
That friction is one of the industry’s biggest headaches: AI models are typically built and tuned for specific hardware, and porting them elsewhere is expensive. Decart’s pitch is that its software removes that burden. For AWS, which competes with Microsoft and Google on AI infrastructure, owning that bridge would be a genuine differentiator.
The AI shopping spree continues
The talks fit a broader pattern of hyperscalers deploying balance-sheet capital to swallow the AI startups whose technology they need — a trend already drawing regulators’ attention on both sides of the Atlantic, as big acquisitions quietly extend platform lock-in.
Whether the $7 billion price tag survives due diligence is the open question, and Anthropic’s decision to walk away last month is a reminder that not every suitor reaches the altar. See also our earlier reporting on the AI trade’s first hard question and a divided Wall Street, plus the Reuters-carried account here.
