Amazon Is in Talks to Buy AI Startup Decart for About $7 Billion
The Wall Street Journal reports Amazon is in talks to acquire Decart, the Israeli-founded AI startup behind real-time video editing and chip-portability software. Nothing is final; neither side is commenting.
Amazon is in talks to buy the AI startup Decart in a deal worth about $7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The talks could still fall apart, or another buyer could step in. A deal could also be signed soon if the talks hold. Amazon declined to comment. Decart did not respond to requests for comment.
Decart is a San Francisco company founded in 2023 by three Israeli engineers. Its central product is software that lets developers move AI models between different chips without the slow, expensive work of re-tuning them for each one. With the industry racing to secure computing power, that kind of portability has become worth paying for.
The company's Lucy model, which counts Nvidia as a backer, can edit live video in real time. Another model, Oasis, generates simulated 3D environments used to train and test robots and self-driving systems before they operate in the real world.
A price that has climbed fast
At $7 billion, the price would be a sharp jump from Decart's last valuation. In May, the company raised $300 million in a round led by Radical Ventures, with Nvidia joining as a new investor. PitchBook data put its valuation then at nearly $4 billion. In total, the startup has raised more than $400 million from investors including Sequoia Capital and Benchmark.
Amazon is not the first big company to take a close look. Anthropic explored buying Decart for about $6 billion in August, according to Bloomberg, then walked away last month after conducting due diligence.
Amazon shares ticked up in overnight trading after the report, gaining about 0.68 percent to $264.21.
Why Amazon wants in
For Amazon, Decart would be a foothold in two of the AI industry's hottest lanes at once: the race to run models on any chip, not just the dominant ones, and the push into AI systems that understand and simulate the physical world.
It would also land as one of the largest AI startup acquisitions of the year, a sign of how quickly the biggest tech companies are willing to pay up for talent and technology they cannot build fast enough themselves.
