Anthropic has decided against acquiring Israeli artificial intelligence startup Decart AI in a deal that had been valued at about $6 billion, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Claude chatbot developer had explored a potential acquisition and conducted due diligence on Decart before ultimately walking away, according to the report. The sources asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. The companies could still explore other forms of cooperation, one person familiar with the matter said. Representatives for Anthropic and Decart declined to comment.
Decart founders Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev
(Photo: Yuval Chen)
Anthropic had been in talks to acquire Decart for about $6 billion, although no final agreement had been reached and the negotiations were always at risk of falling apart. The proposed acquisition centered in part on Decart’s technology for reducing the cost of training and running AI systems by improving the efficiency of the chips powering them.
That technology could have helped Anthropic squeeze more capacity from its existing computing infrastructure as demand for its AI services grows. Decart says its optimization system is designed to help developers “squeeze every drop of performance from every chip,” both while training AI models and during inference, when trained models are used to generate responses.
Anthropic rarely makes major acquisitions but has been investing heavily in computing capacity as it develops new products and expands services for customers. The company is also preparing for a potential initial public offering, with people familiar with the preparations saying it is targeting a fundraising on a scale that could rival or exceed SpaceX’s IPO.
Decart was founded in 2023 by Israeli engineers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev. Alongside its chip-optimization technology, the company develops AI models and tools designed to make demanding AI workloads more efficient.
Although the acquisition is now off the table, the end of the talks does not necessarily sever the relationship between the companies. According to Bloomberg, Anthropic and Decart may still examine other ways to work together as Anthropic continues its push to expand computing capacity ahead of its planned public offering.