Anthropic walks away from $6 billion Decart acquisition

Bloomberg reported on September 8, 2026 that Anthropic walked away, after due diligence, from acquiring Israeli start-up Decart for around $6 billion, a deal announced in August centered on chip efficiency; both sides may still collaborate in other ways.

September 8, 2026 — The AI Desk

Bloomberg reported, in a dispatch published on the evening of September 7 and widely picked up on September 8, 2026, that Anthropic decided not to acquire Decart AI, an Israeli start-up whose purchase had been discussed at around $6 billion. People close to the matter, cited anonymously, say the lab conducted due diligence before withdrawing. The Next Web, Ctech (Calcalist) and several financial roundups confirmed the same pattern. Representatives of both companies declined to comment. One source added that the parties may still look for other forms of collaboration.

The talks had first leaked in August 2026, already valued at around $6 billion, with the caveat that nothing was finalized and that the deal could fall through. That is now the case. For a reader searching for Anthropic drops Decart, the central fact is not a dramatic public breakup. It is the halting, after review, of a deal that would have been by far Anthropic's largest acquisition to date.

What Anthropic was after with Decart and chips

Decart is not, first and foremost, a chatbot competitor. According to Bloomberg and The Next Web, the core of the deal for Anthropic was an optimization layer designed to get more work out of chips during training and inference, so that already-purchased compute could absorb more demand. Decart's website promises to "squeeze every ounce of performance out of every chip." The Next Web emphasizes this point. The deal was about the cost of serving customers, not entering a new consumer product category.

Decart also has another, more visible side. World models trained on text and millions of hours of video, to simulate the behavior of physical objects, with applications ranging from autonomous driving to online commerce. Its Lucy model transforms a person's live video feed to show them dressed differently (virtual try-on); eBay is both an investor and a customer. CEO Dean Leitersdorf also mentioned, in Paris in July, use cases in live streaming on Twitch, TikTok and YouTube. The founders cited converge around Dean (and, according to The Next Web, Orian) Leitersdorf along with Moshe Shalev; the company was founded in 2023 and reportedly has around 100 employees, according to several reports.

Why Anthropic drops Decart after due diligence

In May 2026, Decart raised $300 million in a round led by Radical Ventures, with participation from NVIDIA, Adobe Ventures, Valor Equity Partners and Atreides Management, alongside Sequoia, Benchmark and Zeev Ventures. Valuation at the time was close to $4 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal as reported by The Next Web, up from $3.1 billion the previous August. A $6 billion acquisition would therefore have implied a roughly 50% gain in just a few months.

Anthropic, for its part, rarely makes very large acquisitions. Its most cited recent reference remains a deal worth around $400 million for a small team (Coefficient Bio, on the life sciences side, according to several reports). Six billion dollars would have represented an order of magnitude above that, at a time when the company is spending heavily on compute ahead of an IPO it aims, according to Bloomberg sources, to peg at or above the SpaceX record. Buying an efficiency lever for existing infrastructure is rational. Paying a large premium just weeks before a listing is harder to defend to future shareholders.

No one has officially said what killed the deal. Bloomberg and The Next Web do not settle between price, an obstacle discovered during due diligence, or the discipline of M&A history before listing. Ctech raises more speculative hypotheses (scalability of the technology, geopolitics, founder commitment after the deal) without public evidence. Crypto Briefing and Ctech also indicate that Nvidia, already an investor, reportedly had advanced acquisition talks, and that the founders reportedly preferred Anthropic despite an Nvidia offer considered more financially attractive. These secondary elements should be treated as unconfirmed reporting by the companies themselves.

What Anthropic drops Decart changes for the sector

For Anthropic, the withdrawal leaves its stated priority intact. Investing in compute rather than digesting a multi-billion-dollar target right before the IPO. A commercial collaboration on the efficiency stack, without an acquisition, remains the open path in the dispatches. It would cost less in capital and in narrative for a prospectus.

For Decart, independent status continues with recent cash reserves (the $300 million round) and technology positioned on the most expensive bottleneck in AI. The risk, noted by Ctech, is as much political as financial. A target closely examined and then set aside becomes trickier to resell right away. Nvidia, cited as an alternative, is also busy elsewhere according to the same source (the Hugging Face matter). There is no public indication that an immediate resumption of Nvidia talks has been agreed.

For readers searching Anthropic drops Decart, here is the essential summary. What: Anthropic walks away from acquiring Decart after due diligence. How much: around $6 billion, never finalized. Why it mattered: chip efficiency to lower training and inference costs, right before a highly anticipated Anthropic IPO. What changes: no Decart integration at Anthropic for now; possible collaboration outside of an acquisition; Decart remains independent in a market where every point of GPU performance has a price.

Sources

• Bloomberg — Anthropic Said to Walk Away From $6 Billion Decart Purchase, September 7–8, 2026
• The Next Web — Anthropic has walked away from its $6bn Decart deal, Bloomberg reports, September 8, 2026
• Ctech / Calcalist — What made Anthropic walk away from the $6 billion Decart deal?, September 8, 2026
• Crypto Briefing — Anthropic walks away from $6B Decart acquisition talks, September 7–8, 2026
• BigGo Finance — Anthropic Ends $6 Billion Takeover Talks With AI Startup Decart, September 8, 2026

Frequently asked questions

What did Anthropic decide regarding Decart?

According to Bloomberg, Anthropic decided not to acquire Decart AI after exploring the deal and conducting due diligence. No agreement had been finalized. Both companies declined to comment.

What does Anthropic drops Decart actually mean?

It is the halting of acquisition talks valued at around $6 billion. It is not necessarily the end of any relationship. Sources indicate that another form of collaboration remains possible.

Why was Anthropic interested in Decart?

Primarily for its chip optimization stack, meant to reduce training and inference costs by making better use of existing compute. Decart is also known for world models and generative video (Lucy), but the stated reason for Anthropic's purchase was software-driven hardware efficiency.

What was Decart valued at before the talks?

After raising $300 million in May 2026, its valuation was close to $4 billion. A $6 billion acquisition would have represented a premium of roughly 50%.

Is the withdrawal linked to Anthropic's IPO?

Bloomberg and The Next Web highlight the IPO timeline and the rarity of very large acquisitions at Anthropic, without officially attributing the collapse to a single cause. Price, diligence and pre-listing discipline remain the most cautious interpretations.

Was Nvidia also in the running?

Several reports (Ctech, Crypto Briefing) indicate that Nvidia, already an investor, had advanced talks, and that the founders reportedly preferred Anthropic. These elements are not confirmed by any company statement.