AI business

Amazon is reportedly talking about paying $7 billion for Decart, a startup Anthropic walked away from

The Wall Street Journal says Amazon is close to buying the chip-software startup. Neither company has confirmed it, and the price is about 75% above Decart's last valuation.

·4 min read
Plain editorial cover for the story on Amazon's reported talks to buy AI chip-software startup Decart

Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy Decart for about $7 billion. If that number holds, it’s roughly 75% more than the valuation Decart carried in May. The price is the headline, but I think the more interesting question is what Amazon wants from the company. Decart makes software that moves AI work between different chips, and that’s a fight Amazon has a stake in.

One number, and what it leaves out

On Sunday, October 11, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that a deal could come together soon if talks hold and no other bidder shows up. Amazon declined to comment. Decart did not respond to requests for comment. So the $7 billion is a report, not a filing.

Nothing is signed. Nobody has published a deal either.

The 75% figure comes from comparing it with the valuation Decart got in May. That round raised $300 million, led by Radical Ventures, and valued the company at nearly $4 billion. A valuation from a funding round and a price in a takeover talk are different things, so treat the premium as a rough comparison.

I didn’t get the WSJ text itself. The paywall stops me there, so the WSJ details above come from a Seattle Times reprint, and the May round comes from other outlets.

What Decart sells

Decart’s main product is the Decart Optimization Stack, or DOS. The company’s website says DOS “unlocks the full performance of every major chip” and runs on Nvidia, AWS Trainium and Google TPU hardware. In plain terms, it helps a team run an AI workload on a different kind of chip without rebuilding that workload for each one.

Amazon is building its own AI chip, Trainium3, and it wants customers to use it instead of Nvidia’s. A tool that makes switching less painful is worth more to Amazon than to most buyers, and the WSJ also reported that AWS gave Decart early access to Trainium3 in 2025, after meeting the founders. That detail makes this look less like a random purchase. Yes, it’s a sensible buy on paper, and that is the whole reason the price needs checking.

Anthropic walked away first

This is the part that makes the story more than a price tag. Bloomberg reported in August that Anthropic was in talks to buy Decart for about $6 billion. On September 8, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic had decided not to go ahead, according to people familiar with the matter. Verdict carried that report.

The reports don’t agree on how firm the $6 billion was. Times of India notes that reports differ on it, and the Seattle Times says it is still unclear why Anthropic walked away. I couldn’t find an explanation from either company, so I won’t guess at one. Anthropic was reportedly looking at building its own chips because of the shortage, which makes a chip-software buy look like an obvious thing to want, and yet it passed.

Where I come down

A big company is paying up for plumbing, not for a model, and I find that more interesting than the price. Most AI coverage is about who has the best model this week. Software that decides which chip runs your workload is less exciting, and it’s where lock-in actually gets decided. If Amazon buys Decart, the thing to watch is whether DOS keeps working well on Nvidia hardware. My guess is yes, because customers on Nvidia wouldn’t buy it otherwise, but I’d want that in writing before I believed it.

I’m not sure $7 billion is what a company this size is worth. The premium could reflect a bidding fight, a rush to get a chip-software team, or a bet on the world models that Decart also builds. The reporting doesn’t separate those, so I can’t either.

If you want the other side of Anthropic’s spending, read what its IPO prospectus says about the $42 billion loss. Both stories are about how much these labs and their suppliers are paying to stay in the race.

What to watch: a signed announcement from Amazon or Decart. Until one arrives, the $7 billion is a leak, not a price.

Sources

  1. Seattle Times, reprinting the Wall Street Journal report: Amazon reportedly in talks to buy AI startup Decart in $7B deal, October 11, 2026
  2. Verdict, reporting Bloomberg: Anthropic ends talks on potential $6bn acquisition of Decart AI, September 2026
  3. Decart: The Live AI Lab the World Runs On, company website (DOS description)
  4. Yahoo Finance, on the WSJ report and Decart’s May round: Amazon in talks to acquire Decart in potential $7bn deal, October 2026
  5. Times of India: Amazon may spend $7 billion on AI startup Decart that Anthropic walked away from after offering $6 billion, October 2026