Anthropic walks away from $6 billion deal with Israeli AI startup Decart: What happened?

Claude chatbot maker Anthropic has walked away from a $6 billion deal to acquire Decart, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the development. Notably, Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May, while the proposed acquisition was reportedly around $6 billion.

The Dario Amodei-led company, which rarely makes large acquisitions, has recently been spending on computing power to develop new products and serve customers, ahead of its much-anticipated initial public offering. Anthropic has been seeking to raise as much as SpaceX did.

Anthropic had, on 1 September, agreed to a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia Corp, part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity.

So why then did Anthropic walk away from acquiring Decart AI?

What is Decart?

Decart is an AI research lab and software startup founded in late 2023 by Israeli brothers, Dr Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev. It develops real-time generative video, interactive world models and chip-optimisation software designed to make AI training and inference faster and less expensive.

Its Decart Optimisation Stack (DOS) helps developers improve AI performance across chips, including those from Nvidia and Amazon. Decart also develops world models such as Oasis and Lucy, with applications spanning gaming, robotics and e-commerce. Lucy can transform live video in real time, including creating virtual try-on experiences.

The startup raised $300 million in May, valuing it at nearly $4 billion, with investors including Radical Ventures, Nvidia, Sequoia and Benchmark. Its technology is used by companies and creators across platforms, including eBay, Twitch, TikTok and YouTube.

What we know about Anthropic's talks with Decart

Anthropic had been exploring a deal and performed due diligence on Decart, but ultimately walked away, according to the Bloomberg report.

The report also mentioned that Anthropic and Decart may still pursue other opportunities to collaborate. There has been no official statement from either of the companies.

A key advantage of Decart’s technology is its chip-agnostic design, meaning it can work across different types of AI chips rather than being limited to Nvidia GPUs. This includes processors developed by companies such as Google and Amazon.

The deal fallout also comes as AI acquisitions face growing scrutiny over foreign investment, technology transfer and national security.

Decart was founded in Israel and develops AI infrastructure and chip-optimisation technology, areas that could attract regulatory attention because of their links to advanced computing and semiconductor capabilities.

Anthropic vs Pentagon

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had said last week that Anthropic PBC had resolved its long-running issues with the Trump administration but a top Pentagon official begs to differ.

A US judge sided with Anthropic in its dispute with the American military over AI safety on the battlefield. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts after the company refused to allow the US to use its Claude AI models for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. Anthropic sued in a California court.

In a social media post, US Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael said that the Defense Department’s decision to declare Anthropic a supply-chain risk remains in effect.

“Anthropic is still a designated Supply Chain Risk at @DeptofWar and for the Defense Industrial Base. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Michael wrote in a post on X, closing with a phrase popularized by President Donald Trump on his own social platform.

Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data centre power. The Claude chatbot maker last week agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for $50 billion with Fluidstack Ltd and $45 billion with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.