Anthropic has decided against acquiring artificial intelligence startup Decart after exploring a deal worth roughly $6 billion and completing due diligence on the company, according to Bloomberg.
The Claude developer ultimately walked away from the proposed transaction, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Neither Anthropic nor Decart commented on the report, and no definitive acquisition agreement had been signed. The two companies could still explore other forms of collaboration.
What remains unknown is arguably the most important part of the story: why Anthropic decided not to proceed after conducting due diligence. The reporting does not establish whether the decision was related to valuation, findings during the review process or another strategic consideration.
Anthropic Had Considered Paying $6 Billion
Bloomberg first reported in August that Anthropic was discussing an acquisition of Decart for approximately $6 billion.
At the time, the potential transaction would have represented Anthropic’s largest known acquisition and given the company ownership of technology designed to make AI computing infrastructure significantly more efficient.
Decart’s Decart Optimization Stack, or DOS, helps optimize AI training and inference workloads across different chips. The technology is designed to extract more performance from existing computing hardware, potentially lowering the enormous infrastructure costs associated with training and operating frontier AI systems.
For Anthropic, that capability was particularly attractive. Bloomberg reported that the proposed acquisition was intended to help Anthropic’s existing computing infrastructure handle more demand as adoption of its AI products expands.
Decart Was Valued at Nearly $4 Billion in May
A $6 billion purchase would have represented a substantial premium to Decart’s most recent private valuation.
The startup raised $300 million in May at a valuation of nearly $4 billion, with Radical Ventures leading the financing. Nvidia participated alongside investors including Adobe Ventures, Toyota Ventures, eBay Ventures, Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners. Existing backers include Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Zeev Ventures.
That means Anthropic had been considering paying roughly 50% more than Decart’s May valuation only months after the funding round.
Decart, founded in 2023, operates across both AI infrastructure and generative world models. In addition to DOS, the company develops Lucy, a real-time world model for immersive experiences, and Oasis, a world model focused on physical AI and robotics.
Its technology can transform live video in real time, including applications such as virtual clothing try-ons, while its infrastructure software focuses on improving the economics of increasingly expensive AI workloads.
Anthropic Becomes More Selective Ahead of IPO
The abandoned acquisition comes at a critical moment for Anthropic as the company prepares for a highly anticipated public offering.
Anthropic is spending heavily on computing capacity while rapidly expanding its business, making infrastructure efficiency strategically important. A successful acquisition of Decart could have helped the company extract more capacity from its existing hardware without relying exclusively on additional data-center expansion.
At the same time, a $6 billion acquisition shortly before an IPO would have represented a major capital allocation decision for a company that has historically made relatively few large acquisitions.
For now, there is no evidence that the failed transaction reflects a problem with Decart itself. Bloomberg’s reporting establishes only that Anthropic completed due diligence and decided not to proceed, while leaving open the possibility of another commercial relationship between the companies.
The decision therefore leaves one major unanswered question: what Anthropic discovered or concluded during the process that made a $6 billion acquisition no longer attractive.
