Anthropic Nears $7B Deal for Decart, Outbidding Nvidia

Anthropic and Decart are trading drafts of an acquisition agreement that would value the Israeli AI startup at about $7 billion, most of it paid in Anthropic shares. Bloomberg first reported the talks at a $6 billion figure on August 13; the higher number surfaced days later through Israeli outlets close to the deal.

The founders, Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, both alumni of Israel's Unit 8200, picked Anthropic even though Nvidia, already an investor in the startup, reportedly offered a higher valuation. Sequoia Capital, Decart's largest backer, is closely involved in the negotiations. Leitersdorf, who finished a computer science doctorate at 23, has spoken of wanting Decart to become "the Google or Apple of AI."

The product doing the work here is Decart's optimization stack, which the company says makes models "up to eight times faster on the same hardware," including Nvidia GPUs, Google TPUs, and Amazon Trainium. Decart also builds real-time video 'world models,' the same simulate-the-physical-world category Nvidia and others have been chasing for robotics.

Decart was founded on September 7, 2023, just weeks before the outbreak of the war in Israel. It has raised roughly $450 million to date, employs about 100 people, and was valued near $4 billion in its most recent round only months earlier. A close would make the founders billionaires and would be the largest acquisition in Anthropic's history, landing during a stretch when Anthropic's own paper is already turning over on secondary markets, most recently in Situational Awareness's shopping of a stake, and ahead of a public offering expected in September or October.

Both companies have declined to comment.