Anthropic in talks to buy Israeli AI startup Decart for $6 billion ahead of its IPO

The Claude maker is negotiating to acquire Decart AI, whose chip-optimization software could slash Anthropic's inference costs as it races toward a Nasdaq listing.

Anthropic is in talks to acquire Decart AI, an Israeli startup that makes chips work more efficiently, for about $6 billion, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The deal hasn't been finalized and could still fall apart — but if it closes, it would be Anthropic's largest known acquisition, landing just ahead of the Claude maker's hotly anticipated initial public offering.

The rationale is cost, not raw capability. Anthropic is spending an estimated $19 billion on compute in 2026 — roughly a dollar of hardware for every dollar of revenue — and has told investors it can lift gross margins from roughly 40% today to 77% by 2028. Decart's optimization stack, which uses hardware-aware compilers and hand-tuned kernels to push chips past 80% utilization versus an industry norm of 40–50%, is exactly the kind of efficiency gain that closes that gap, TechTimes reported. Decart's team would join Anthropic's inference and performance division.

Decart was founded in 2023 by three Israeli engineers and raised $300 million in May from Radical Ventures and Nvidia at a valuation of nearly $4 billion — so $6 billion amounts to a roughly 50% premium, according to IBTimes. Beyond chip efficiency, the startup builds generative-video "world models," work one person described as evidence of "high-quality infrastructure talent." Both companies declined to comment.

The reported talks cap a rapid reshuffling of bidders: Nvidia, SpaceX, and Amazon had each been named as potential buyers in earlier coverage before Anthropic emerged as the party in advanced discussions. With Anthropic's confidential S-1 filed June 1 and a Nasdaq listing targeted for as early as October, a pre-IPO efficiency acquisition would convert an investor assumption into demonstrated engineering.