Anthropic Reportedly Eyes $6 Billion Decart Acquisition

Anthropic is reportedly considering a $6 billion acquisition of Decart, which develops AI training and operational optimization tools alongside models designed for real-world applications, according to Bloomberg.

The startup would provide two potential benefits for Anthropic: improving the efficiency of its own AI model training and operations, and expanding the AI lab’s model portfolio.

It is not clear which part of Decart Anthropic is more interested in. The chip efficiency software could provide much-needed improvements in training costs, reducing the overall compute burden for the lab. At the same time, Decart’s physical AI models have a wide range of potential use cases, from autonomous vehicle operations to retail.

One example is Lucy, an AI model that can take a short video of a person and generate a real-time video of them trying on an item of clothing. This has attracted interest from ecommerce companies such as eBay, which is an investor.

Anthropic stepping up its dealmaking

If completed at the reported price, the Decart deal would represent a major escalation in Anthropic’s acquisition strategy. Its previous largest disclosed acquisition was the $400 million purchase of Coefficient Bio earlier this year.

Compared with its rivals, Anthropic has been relatively inactive on the M&A front. OpenAI has spent more than $7 billion, with acquisitions ranging from Jony Ive’s io hardware startup to business talk show TBPN. SpaceX has made even larger splashes, including its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor.

The tech giants have also been less acquisition-heavy than in previous technology cycles, largely due to the difficulty of getting major deals past regulators. Instead, Meta, Google, and Microsoft have completed several acqui-hires in the AI space.

More must-read AI coverage

Demand for AI spurring higher spend

Anthropic is in the market for greater efficiency and more resources. It has reportedly been in discussions with Samsung about developing a custom AI chip, following similar efforts by the tech giants and OpenAI. The chip would be designed specifically to improve the efficiency of Anthropic’s AI model training and operations.

At the same time, Anthropic has increased its spending on compute as it tries to meet huge demand for its services. It signed a $1.25 billion-a-month deal with SpaceX, one of its key rivals, to access the company’s Colossus 1 data center. It has signed similarly large deals over the past few months, including a 20-year lease with bitcoin miner Riot Platforms worth $9.1 billion and another agreement with bitcoin miner TeraWulf worth $19 billion.

While the AI lab was initially hesitant to sign such large contracts, it has changed its tune as revenues have skyrocketed. It even reportedly recorded its first profitable quarter in June, a significant milestone for a company spending so heavily on compute and staff.

A Decart acquisition would suggest Anthropic is beginning to think about infrastructure differently. The company has already committed billions of dollars to securing the compute needed to train and operate its models; buying Decart could give it technology designed to make that compute go further.

Whether Anthropic ultimately spends $6 billion to do that remains uncertain. But even the reported talks point to a growing reality for the AI industry: competing at the frontier increasingly means investing not just in more computing power, but in ways to use that power more efficiently.

More Anthropic news: The Claude maker is reportedly in talks with Samsung to develop a custom AI chip as it looks to cut compute costs and reduce its reliance on Nvidia hardware.