Amazon is in talks to buy AI startup Decart in a deal that could value it at about $7 billion, per The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter on Sunday, 11 October 2026. Nothing is signed. The Journal said a deal could come soon if the talks don’t fall apart or another suitor doesn’t show up. Reuters said it couldn’t immediately verify the report, and neither Amazon nor Decart responded to its requests for comment.
So treat this as reported talks, not a done deal. Still, the reason Amazon would be interested says a lot about where the AI race is heading. The part of Decart at the center of this story isn’t a chatbot. It’s software that makes it easier to move AI work from one kind of chip to another.
What Decart Actually Does
Decart is a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2023 by Israeli engineers Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf, and Moshe Shalev. The WSJ’s framing is simple: its software “makes it easier for developers to switch between different AI chips.”
That matters because AI models usually have to be tuned for the specific processor they run on. SiliconANGLE reports that Decart’s software, called DOS, optimizes neural networks for a given chip, shrinking work that used to take months down to a couple of weeks. In practice, that means a company could shift training or inference to different hardware if its needs change or if the chips it wants are hard to get.
Decart has a second life as a model maker. It builds Lucy, a model that can edit live video in real time, and Oasis, which generates simulated environments for training and testing robots and self-driving systems, according to Reuters’ write-up of the report.
Why Amazon Would Want Chip-Switching Software
Amazon designs its own AI chips, called Trainium, and sells them through Amazon Web Services as an alternative to Nvidia hardware. The hard part of any Nvidia alternative isn’t only the silicon. It’s convincing developers that moving their models over won’t cost months of engineering.
That’s where Decart fits. As CTech puts it, software that helps customers run models efficiently across different processors could make Amazon’s cloud more attractive. The two companies already know each other: CTech says AWS is a strategic customer of Decart, and the Journal reported that AWS gave Decart early access to its Trainium3 chip in 2025 after being impressed by the founders.
There’s a tension here too. RuntimeWire asks whether owning that optimization layer would strengthen Trainium or complicate a hardware-agnostic pitch. A tool that helps you leave any chip is valuable. A tool owned by one chipmaker’s parent company may look different to customers.
The Anthropic Backstory
Amazon isn’t the first big name to look at Decart. Bloomberg reported in September that Anthropic had decided not to go ahead after doing due diligence on Decart. Anthropic had explored a deal in August for about $6 billion, Bloomberg reported. One person told Bloomberg the two companies might still find other ways to work together.
Why Anthropic walked hasn’t been publicly established, CTech notes. CTech also reports that Nvidia had earlier pursued a deal of its own before Anthropic became the preferred bidder.
The number has moved too. The Journal, citing PitchBook data, said Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May. Reuters notes that Decart raised $300 million that month in a round led by Radical Ventures, with Nvidia joining as a new investor. If the reported figure holds, that would be a big step up from May, and about $1 billion above the roughly $6 billion Bloomberg reported for Anthropic’s talks.
What People Are Saying
This has been a press-driven story so far. Plenty of outlets picked up the WSJ report within hours, but community discussion has been thin: the Reuters link on Hacker News drew a handful of points and no comments when we checked. A few reactions on X, surfaced by Techmeme, give a flavor of the takes. These are personal opinions, not reporting.
@mrstealth27 focused on the price gap: “Funny that Anthropic walked at 6 and Amazon might pay 7. Chip switching software matters more when you’re pushing your own Trainium.”
@himanshustwts pointed to the hype around the startup: “the fascination towards decart is going crazy now amazon is going after to acquire the company given anthropic (who were early buyers) have cancelled the deal during the due diligence.”
JamoraquAI Take
The flashy AI headlines are about models. The money is increasingly about the plumbing underneath them. If Amazon really is in talks at about $7B, per WSJ, it’s a sign that the ability to move AI work between chips is now worth billions on its own.
For Amazon, the logic is easy to follow. Trainium gets more interesting when switching to it is cheap and fast. For everyone else building on AI, the lesson is the same one we made in our piece on multi-model routing: portability is leverage. Teams that can move between models, and now between chips, are harder to squeeze on price.
The open question is what happens to that portability if this goes through. Software that helps you switch is most useful when it stays neutral. Watch whether Decart’s tools keep working well across other vendors’ chips. And keep in mind that this is still a reported negotiation. Anthropic’s talks got deep into due diligence before they ended, and these could end the same way.
Sources
- The Wall Street Journal — Amazon in Talks to Buy AI Startup Decart for Around $7 Billion (Kate Clark and Lauren Thomas, 11 October 2026)
- Reuters — Amazon in talks to buy AI startup Decart for around $7 billion, WSJ reports (11 October 2026)
- The Straits Times (Reuters) — Amazon in talks to buy AI start-up Decart for around US$7 billion: Report (12 October 2026)
- SiliconANGLE — Report: Amazon in talks with AI startup Decart (Mike Wheatley, 11 October 2026)
- CTech — Amazon emerges as potential buyer of Israeli AI startup Decart (Sophie Shulman and Golan Hazani, 12 October 2026)
- Bloomberg Law — Amazon Is in Talks to Buy AI Startup Decart, WSJ Reports (11 October 2026)
- RuntimeWire — Amazon talks to buy Decart as chip software draws a premium (Ryan Merket, 11 October 2026)
- Bloomberg — Anthropic Said to Walk Away From $6 Billion Decart Purchase (Shirin Ghaffary and Ryan Gould, 7 September 2026 ET)
- Techmeme — 11 October 2026 archive (WSJ cluster and X reactions)
- Hacker News — Reuters link discussion
