Anthropic Cancels $6 Billion Decart AI Acquisition After Due Diligence

Anthropic Walks Away From Decart After Completing Due Diligence

Anthropic has decided against acquiring Decart AI after completing due diligence on what would have been a $6 billion deal, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified1

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. The Anthropic acquisition talks, first reported in August, have now fallen apart, though the two companies may still pursue other forms of collaboration3

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. Representatives for both Anthropic and the AI startup Decart declined to comment on the reports.

Chip Efficiency Technology Was the Real Target

While Decart AI is publicly known for world models like its Oasis simulation platform and Lucy model for live-video editing, the Anthropic acquisition rationale centered on chip efficiency technology and AI infrastructure optimization1

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. Decart's optimization stack is designed to make chips work harder across both AI training and inference, promising to "squeeze every ounce of performance from every chip," according to the company's website. The idea was to let Anthropic's existing compute infrastructure absorb more demand for its Claude models as the company faces growing capacity constraints. Anthropic has signed some $517 billion in compute capacity leases over the past 11 months, amounting to 14.8GW of capacity, according to The Information2

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Premium Valuation Raised Questions Ahead of IPO

The $6 billion price tag represented roughly a 50% mark-up over Decart's nearly $4 billion valuation following a $300 million Series B funding round in May led by Radical Ventures1

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. That round, which brought Decart's total funding to more than $450 million, included participation from Nvidia, Adobe Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Atreides Management, alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures5

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. The timing matters because Anthropic is preparing for a public listing expected in mid-October that investors hope will raise $75 billion or more at a $2 trillion valuation, making it the largest debut in history2

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. Paying a substantial premium for an acquisition weeks before an IPO would have been difficult to defend to incoming shareholders.

Decart's Dual Business Model and Technology Stack

Founded in 2023 by Israeli Defence Forces intelligence unit veterans Dean and Orian Leitersdorf with Moshe Shalev, Decart runs two businesses that sit unusually far apart1

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. One is the AI optimization layer Anthropic was interested in, while the other focuses on world models—systems trained on text and millions of hours of video to understand how physical objects behave. These generative video technologies target applications from autonomous driving to online retail. The Lucy model takes live video of a person and generates high-resolution video of them wearing something they are not, addressing the virtual try-on problem that has challenged fashion e-commerce. eBay is both an investor and a customer, while the technology is also used for live streaming on platforms like Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube, according to CEO Dean Leitersdorf1

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. The Oasis model generates realistic simulation environments for training robots and testing autonomous systems3

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What Anthropic Cancels and What Comes Next

The Anthropic cancellation of the Decart deal represents a shift in strategy for a company that rarely makes large acquisitions. Its most notable acquisition to date was $400 million for a team of fewer than ten people at Coefficient Bio, focused on AI-driven drug discovery1

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. The company has made six acquisitions total, including Humanloop, Fractional AI, Stainless, Vercept, and Bun. Whether the collaboration the two sides are said to be still considering means a commercial agreement for chip efficiency rather than ownership remains to be seen—it would be the cheaper version of the same idea and would not need explaining in a prospectus ahead of the public listing. Watch for potential partnerships that could deliver compute cost benefits without the acquisition premium. The cancellation also represents a disappointment for the Israeli start-up ecosystem, as the acquisition was expected to lead to Anthropic's first development center in Israel, though the American company still plans to expand marketing and sales operations in the country5

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