Anthropic in talks to buys Israeli AI startup Decart in reported $6bn deal

The Claude developer is eyeing its biggest acquisition as the race to build more efficient AI intensifies

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI developers and the maker of Claude, is reportedly in talks to acquire Israeli startup Decart.

The deal could value the fast-growing company at around $6 billion, marking what would be the Claude developer’s largest acquisition to date and its first in Israel.

The talks were first reported by Bloomberg, with Israeli technology publication CTech reporting further details of the negotiations. Neither company has commented publicly and a deal has yet to be confirmed.

Founded in 2023 by former Unit 8200 colleagues Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, Decart has rapidly established itself as one of Israel’s most closely watched AI companies. Based in Tel Aviv, the startup develops technology designed to make the infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence faster and more efficient, helping companies reduce the enormous computing power required to train and run advanced AI models.

The company attracted international attention last year with Oasis, an AI-generated interactive world model that allowed users to create and explore virtual environments in real time. It followed that with Lucy, a platform capable of transforming live video streams instantly using generative AI. Alongside those consumer-facing products, Decart has built software that optimises the performance of AI hardware, including Nvidia Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) as well as Google’s TPUs and Amazon’s Trainium chips.

The reported acquisition comes just months after Decart raised $300 million in a funding round that valued the business at around $4 billion. Investors include Nvidia, Radical Ventures, Benchmark, Sequoia Capital, Zeev Ventures, Toyota Ventures and Adobe Ventures, underlining the company’s rapid rise since emerging from stealth less than three years ago.

For Anthropic, acquiring Decart would strengthen its AI infrastructure capabilities as competition intensifies among companies building large language models. Improving the efficiency of the chips and computing systems that power AI has become a strategic priority across the industry as demand for increasingly powerful models continues to grow.

According to CTech, Anthropic was not the only company interested in the startup. Nvidia is said to have previously held acquisition discussions with Decart, while Amazon and cloud computing company Nebius are also believed to have explored potential deals. CTech also reported that Decart’s operations would continue from Tel Aviv if the acquisition goes ahead, giving Anthropic its first research and development centre in Israel.

If completed, the deal would represent one of the biggest exits in Israel’s AI sector and another milestone for a company whose valuation has risen from startup to multi-billion-dollar business in less than three years.