Reports of a potential acquisition have surfaced around Decart, an AI startup whose technology allows developers to move workloads across different chip architectures, with Amazon.com weighing a deal valued at around $7 billion. Negotiations remain ongoing, with people close to the situation telling one outlet that an agreement may materialise in the near term, though the process carries the possibility of breaking down or attracting a rival offer.
Early access to Amazon Web Services' custom Trainium3 chip was extended to Decart in 2025, and the startup's ability to shift between chip architectures has taken on added weight at a time when demand for computing resources has intensified across the industry. Designed by AWS specifically for the demands of machine learning and generative AI workloads, Trainium represents a line of proprietary chips built to handle both the training and deployment of such models. Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) processors represent the field against which the new chip measures itself.
In a post on X, Futurum Equities market strategist Shay Boloor argued that the transaction amounted to an acquisition of software talent aimed at lifting Trainium utilisation rates and broadening the appeal of Amazon's custom silicon as AI workloads migrate across varied chip architectures.
Reports suggest Amazon intends to acquire Decart for around $7 billion, a valuation tied in part to the AI startup's work pushing real-time video throughput from 26 frames per second on GPUs to roughly 101 frames per second on Trainium hardware. Anthropic had also been in talks to acquire Decart, though those negotiations were reported to have ended in September without a deal, with the startup's valuation placed at around $6 billion at that time.
Established in 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf, Moshe Shalev, and Orian Leitersdorf, the venture focuses on generative video rendered in real time and interactive world models, with Oasis and Lucy among its released products. A Series B funding round completed in May drew $300 million from a group that included Nvidia, with Radical Ventures at the helm, and the capital injection carried the company's valuation to just under $4 billion. Three prior backers — Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures — put money into the round as well.
Neither Amazon nor Decart had offered a reply to those requests by the time of publication. Amazon shares wrapped up Friday's session at $262.43, a gain of 3.29% on the day, before edging up a further 0.038% to $262.53 once after-hours trading got under way.
