Amazon wants to buy Decart. A reported $7 billion sits on the table, after The Wall Street Journal first reported the talks on Oct. 11, 20261. Amazon and Decart stay quiet. The silence says little.
Decart's founders and backers would collect that $7 billion, if the reported offer turns into a signed deal. Three Israeli engineers started Decart in 2023: Dean Leitersdorf, his brother Orian, and Moshe Shalev4. Dean and Moshe met while serving in Unit 8200, the Israeli military's signals intelligence branch8.
Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Radical Ventures and Nvidia all hold stakes in the company that would pay out too6. So do two angel investors: Andrej Karpathy and former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner.
What Decart Sells, and Why AWS Wants It
Decart's two best-known products build moving pictures and simulated worlds. Lucy edits live video while it plays, and Nvidia backs it directly, even as Amazon negotiates to buy the company that built it2. Oasis builds simulated 3D worlds that can train a robot or a self-driving car3.
A third product matters more to Amazon. The Decart Optimization Stack lets one AI model run on Nvidia chips, Google chips or Amazon's Trainium chips. Each switch skips a rebuild3.
Dean Leitersdorf, Decart's co-founder and CEO, gave a number from a demo on Amazon's hardware. "The max we hit on GPU was 26 frames per second; on Trainium we're approaching 101 frames per second," he said8.
AWS gave Decart early access to its Trainium3 chip in 2025, after a meeting that impressed its engineers3. "Customers don't care what chip we use. Right now, Amazon lets us significantly reduce costs, and our video runs four times faster," Leitersdorf said8. That is the pitch Amazon is reportedly paying $7 billion to own1.
The Deal Anthropic Walked Away From
Decart's valuation has climbed fast. A $100 million raise in August 2025 valued the company at $3.1 billion7. Most of that cash sat unspent. Decart had used under $10 million of investor money by then, funding its chip costs from its own revenue.
Nine months later, a $300 million round led by Radical Ventures pushed the valuation to $4 billion6. Nvidia invested in that round too, as both a backer and a customer.
Nvidia offered more than Anthropic did for the company outright. Decart's founders chose Anthropic anyway, betting on equity ahead of an Anthropic initial public offering, Globes reported4. By August 2026, Anthropic was working out a stock-swap deal worth about $6 billion, its largest acquisition of the year5. It finished its checks, then walked away in September9.
Decart's price more than doubles to $7 billion in fourteen months
Decart's valuation and reported acquisition offers, August 2025 to October 2026
Each point is a funding round or a reported offer for Decart; the last two points are reported offers awaiting a deal, and the dashed line marks where estimates begin.
The last two points are reported offers awaiting a deal; Anthropic's offer collapsed after due diligence.
Sources: Ynetnews [1]; Calcalist [5]; Calcalist [6]; Calcalist [7]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Period | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Aug. 2025 | $3.1B | |
| May 2026 | $4.0B | |
| Aug. 2026 (estimate) | $6.0B | Anthropic's offer, later abandoned |
| Oct. 2026 (estimate) | $7.0B | Amazon's reported offer |
Anthropic's interest centered on Decart's chip-switching software, the same tool Amazon is reportedly paying for now9. Both sides declined to say why the deal fell apart, Bloomberg reported.
The Case for Paying Nearly Double
Shay Boloor watches Amazon's chip strategy for a living, as a market strategist at Futurum Equities. He reads the Decart talks as a simple trade. "Amazon is effectively buying software expertise to improve Trainium utilization and make its custom silicon more attractive as AI workloads expand," Boloor said10.
AWS already leaned on Decart's software to make Trainium faster. The talk of a sale came later3. Read as strategy, the deal turns a vendor into an owned team.
Amazon's reported bid ranks mid-pack among this year's big AI checks. Nvidia agreed to pay $12.93 billion for Hugging Face in September12.
AMD paid $8.2 billion in stock for Fei-Fei Li's World Labs the same month13. Measured against both, Amazon's reported $7 billion for Decart looks ordinary for 2026.
Amazon's reported $7 billion for Decart ranks third among 2026's biggest AI deals
Announced or reported price, four AI acquisitions since August 2026
Each bar is one deal's price. The two lightest bars show estimated offers, and the lightest already collapsed before signing.
Nvidia's and AMD's prices are signed agreements; Amazon's is a reported offer, and Anthropic's was an offer it later walked away from.
Sources: Ynetnews [1]; Calcalist [5]; TechCrunch [12]; Futurum Group [13]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Nvidia buys Hugging Face | $12.93B |
| AMD buys World Labs | $8.20B |
| Amazon's reported Decart offer (estimate) | $7.00B |
| Anthropic's abandoned Decart offer (estimate) | $6.00B |
The Case Against
Some numbers disagree. Decart keeps its revenue closely held. Outside estimates put it at several tens of millions of dollars a year. That is a fraction of the reported price3.
Ursula Reutin raised a different worry on KIRO Newsradio's "The Gee and Ursula Show," after the Decart talks became public11. "When Amazon just keeps growing and growing, yeah, it can make things cheaper and faster in the short term. But if every company eventually gets swallowed up by one of a handful of giant companies, that's not great," Reutin said.
Anthropic saw the same company up close and walked away anyway, after finishing its own diligence9. Whatever it found, Amazon is paying a billion dollars more to find out for itself.
What to do
Watch your AWS bill for Decart's optimization software, once a deal closes. Folded into Trainium pricing for free, it turns into leverage for any team already moving work off Nvidia's chips. Kept as a paid add-on, it becomes one more line item to budget for next year.
If you compete with Decart, in real-time video or in chip-switching tools, log this price. A three-year-old team just set a mark for AI infrastructure work. Its own revenue stayed hidden the whole time.
By the numbers
- $7 billion: Amazon's reported offer for Decart, which The Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported Oct. 11, 20261.
- Seventy-five percent: how much higher that bid runs than Decart's $4 billion valuation from May 2026, five months earlier6.
- Nearly $6 billion: Anthropic's abandoned offer for Decart, reported in August 2026 before Anthropic walked away in September5.
- About 100: Decart's headcount when the Amazon talks surfaced3.
- Three: the Israeli engineers who founded Decart in 20234.
- Just over $3 billion: Decart's valuation after an August 2025 funding round7.
- $12.93 billion: Nvidia's price for Hugging Face, the biggest AI acquisition of September 202612.
- Almost $8.2 billion: AMD's all-stock price for Fei-Fei Li's World Labs, signed the same month13.
What to watch
Little else is confirmed. Watch for a signed agreement, or a public word that talks have ended. A disclosed revenue figure, once any deal closes, would matter just as much. That number would settle whether the price fit the sales.
Sources
- Reuters, "Amazon in talks to buy AI startup Decart in $7 billion deal, report says," Ynetnews, Oct. 12, 2026, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/me39lpkc5
- Reuters, "Amazon in talks to buy AI chip startup Decart for $7B," DealStreetAsia, Oct. 12, 2026, https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?p=497779
- Tech Funding News, "Amazon in talks to buy Decart for $7B, weeks after Anthropic walked away from a $6B deal," Oct. 13, 2026, https://techfundingnews.com/amazon-in-talks-to-buy-decart-for-7b-weeks-after-anthropic-walked-away-from-a-6b-deal/
- Meytal Vaizberg, "Amazon in talks to buy Israel's Decart at $7b valuation - report," Globes, Oct. 12, 2026, https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-amazon-in-talks-to-buy-israels-decart-at-7b-valuation-1001559158
- Golan Hazani and Sophie Shulman, "Anthropic in talks to acquire Israeli AI startup Decart for $6 billion," Calcalist, Aug. 13, 2026, https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/mrrffazk1
- Calcalist, "Nvidia backs Israeli AI unicorn Decart in $300 million funding round at $4 billion valuation," May 18, 2026, https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjt9ncukgl
- Calcalist, "Decart hits $3.1 billion valuation on $100 million raise to power real-time interactive AI," Aug. 7, 2025, https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/m7yk4c4e3
- Calcalist, "A two-year-old Israeli unicorn is quietly stress-testing Amazon's AI future," Dec. 10, 2025, https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1awviuf11l
- The Next Web, "Anthropic has walked away from its $6bn Decart deal, Bloomberg reports," Sept. 8, 2026, https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-walks-away-decart-6bn-acquisition
- Yahoo Finance, "Amazon Reportedly in Talks to Buy Decart for $7 Billion — Market Strategist Says It Is 'Effectively Buying Software Expertise'," Oct. 12, 2026, https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/amazon-reportedly-talks-buy-decart-013303203.html
- MyNorthwest / KIRO Newsradio, "'How big's too big?': Spike raises concerns about Amazon's reach as the company reportedly pursues another AI acquisition," Oct. 17, 2026, https://mynorthwest.com/kiro-opinion/amazon-acquisition-ai/4287192
- TechCrunch, "Nvidia confirms it will buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion," Sept. 3, 2026, https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/nvidia-confirms-it-will-buy-hugging-face-for-12-9-billion/
- Futurum Group, "AMD Acquires World Labs for $8.2 Billion to Design Silicon Around World Models," Sept. 28, 2026, https://futurumgroup.com/insights/amd-acquires-world-labs-for-82-billion-to-design-silicon-around-world-models/