Anthropic PBC is reportedly in discussions to acquire Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence startup Decart AI for approximately $6 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The potential transaction has not been finalised and negotiations could still collapse, according to a Reuters report.
The talks come as Anthropic prepares for a potential mega initial public offering and seeks to rapidly expand its computing capabilities. The AI company is looking to address capacity constraints as demand for its services continues to grow.
Decart develops AI infrastructure and optimisation technology designed to help developers improve the performance of AI applications across a broad range of chips. The startup also has a strong focus on generative video and has developed so-called world models that can make real-time changes to live video streams.
The acquisition could give Anthropic additional technology and infrastructure to handle increasing demand for its AI services, Reuters reported.
Among Decart's products is Lucy, an AI model capable of editing live video in real time, according to the company's website. The startup has also developed Oasis, a model designed to generate simulated environments for training and evaluating robotics and autonomous driving systems.
Decart announced in May that it had raised $300 million in a funding round led by Radical Ventures. NVIDIA participated in the financing as a new investor, strengthening the startup's ties to the semiconductor giant.
The reported acquisition discussions also come shortly after Anthropic signalled plans to deepen its work on AI hardware.
Last week, Anthropic said it was recruiting engineers with expertise spanning the hardware and software stack. The company said the hires would help it co-design custom chips and AI models to make its Claude artificial intelligence system faster and more efficient.
A deal for Decart could therefore provide Anthropic with additional expertise in AI infrastructure and optimisation as it scales its computing resources and meets growing demand for Claude.
Anthropic adds invisible watermarking to the Claude text
Anthropic said Wednesday that it will introduce an invisible watermarking system for text processed by its Claude artificial intelligence chatbot as the company moves to comply with European Union regulations.
However, the company cautioned that the watermark should not be interpreted as proof that Claude generated the content. Instead, the marker indicates only that the text was processed by Claude at some point.
The feature, unveiled Monday in San Francisco, is designed to remain invisible to users and persist even when text is copied and pasted into another document or platform.
Anthropic said the technology nevertheless has limitations. The presence of a Claude watermark indicates that the content may have been processed by the chatbot, but it does not establish who or what originally created the text, the company said.
The company also warned that the absence of a watermark does not necessarily mean Claude was not involved. Very short passages or content that has undergone extensive editing may not retain the marker, Anthropic said.
The watermarking technology is part of Anthropic's broader effort to provide greater transparency around AI-generated and AI-processed content while meeting regulatory requirements in Europe.
For supported file formats, Anthropic said Claude will use a different approach. When the chatbot generates a file such as a JPG image, it will include digitally signed provenance metadata.
That information will follow an open standard designed to document the origin and history of digital content, potentially making it easier for users and systems to determine how a file was created or modified.
