Anthropic is in talks to buy AI startup Decart AI for roughly $6B, a deal that would be the Claude maker's largest known acquisition.
Decart makes software that helps chips run more efficiently during both AI model training and inference. The potential deal is intended to help Anthropic's existing computing infrastructure absorb rising demand, according to people familiar with the matter. Talks have not been finalized and could still fall through.
Founded in 2023 by brothers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, Decart raised $300M in May in a round led by Radical Ventures, valuing the company at nearly $4B.
That round valued the company at roughly $4B. Decart's team would join Anthropic's inference and performance organization if the deal closes.
Decart also builds so-called world models designed to simulate physical environments. Its Lucy AI model generates real-time video that makes it appear a person is trying on clothing, a feature used by e-commerce platform eBay.
Chip costs are the pressure point
Acquiring Decart would let Anthropic squeeze more performance from the chips it already pays for, rather than simply buying more.
Axios noted that Anthropic is starting to look less like a pure Nvidia customer and more like a potential competitor — and is partly using Nvidia's own investment capital to get there.
The deal comes as Anthropic spends heavily on data centers stocked with costly chips and relies on hardware from a growing mix of providers.
The timing is deliberate. Anthropic is targeting a public debut in September or early October, according to people familiar with its plans, in what could be the largest IPO on record.
Investors expect a valuation of $2T or more, citing annualized revenue projections of $100B to $120B by year-end, up more than 10 times over the course of 2026.
"If Anthropic is growing 800 per cent a year, you'd think at the incredibly low end they would trade at 30 times [revenue]."
Anthropic investor, Financial Times
But the road to IPO is not clean. Investors have pressed Anthropic executives on Chinese AI competition, tensions with the Trump administration, and a growing backlash to data center construction.
The Commerce Department temporarily banned Anthropic's top models in June, which slowed revenue growth that month before the company rebounded. Anthropic's market-leading model also costs more than twice as much to use as OpenAI's flagship, while Chinese open-weight alternatives are a fraction of the price.
Acquiring Decart won't resolve those pricing pressures on its own, but controlling more of its chip efficiency stack gives Anthropic one lever it can pull before investors start scrutinizing the numbers publicly.
