Anthropic has dropped its plan to acquire AI startup Decart. Bloomberg reported this on September 8 (local time), citing people familiar with the matter.
According to Bloomberg, Anthropic reviewed the acquisition and even conducted due diligence. It ultimately stepped back at the final stage, just before signing a deal. The price being discussed was about $6 billion, or roughly 8 trillion won. Bloomberg first reported on August 13 that the two sides were discussing a $6 billion acquisition, but even then no agreement had been finalized.
Bloomberg said the two companies may still have room to cooperate in other ways.
◆ What kind of company is Decart?
Decart opened in Tel Aviv, Israel, in September 2023. It was founded by CEO Dean Leitersdorf and Chief Product Officer Moshe Shalev.
Its core technology is chip efficiency. Training and running AI models requires large numbers of semiconductors such as GPUs. If more computation can be handled with the same chip, costs fall accordingly. Decart has built an inference and training platform that runs across different types of chips, including Nvidia GPUs, Google TPUs, and Amazon Trainium. Its structure is not tied to any one company’s chips.
It also has real-time video generation technology. The company has released a model with latency reduced to under 30 milliseconds.
Investment has poured in quickly. On August 7, 2025, it raised $100 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital and Benchmark. At the time, the company was valued at $3.1 billion.
On May 19, 2026, it secured an additional $300 million in a round led by Radical Ventures. Nvidia came in as a new investor, and Adobe Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and eBay Ventures also participated. Following the round, the company was valued at $4 billion. Cumulative investment totalled $453 million.
The proposed $6 billion acquisition price was 50% higher than its most recent valuation.
◆ Anthropic ahead of IPO
Anthropic is preparing to go public. In early June, it privately submitted a draft of its S-1 registration filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Wilson Sonsini, which handled Google’s 2004 IPO, is serving as its legal adviser. Market talk has centered on a possible listing in early October.
The company’s size, confirmed in its latest funding round, is substantial. Anthropic announced on May 28 (local time) that it had raised $6.5 billion in its Series H round. Its valuation was $96.5 billion, or about 144 trillion won. Its annualized revenue as of late May was estimated at $47 billion.
Korean companies are also among Anthropic’s shareholders. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix participated in the Series H round alongside Micron. SK Telecom invested about $100 million in August 2023.
For a company preparing to go public, deciding on an 8 trillion won cash outlay would be a heavy burden. Neither Anthropic nor Decart issued an official statement regarding why Anthropic stepped away after completing due diligence.