Amazon is in talks to acquire the artificial-intelligence startup Decart in a deal valued at around $7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, October 11, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. The talks, first reported by the Journal and carried by Reuters, could produce a transaction soon if negotiations hold — or fall apart if another bidder emerges. Neither Amazon nor Decart has confirmed the discussions, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the report.
What Decart does
Decart is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded in 2023 by three Israeli engineers — brothers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, all reported veterans of Israel's elite Unit 8200. It builds three products: DOS (Decart Optimization Stack), a software engine that lets AI models run across different chips and processors without custom programming libraries; Lucy, a real-time video generation and editing model backed by Nvidia that can transform live video in real time; and Oasis, an interactive "world model" that generates simulated environments to train and test robotics and autonomous-driving systems.
The Journal reported Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May, citing PitchBook data, after raising $300 million in a round led by Radical Ventures with Nvidia joining as a new investor. Its backers include Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Atreides Management, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy and the Yamauchi family of Nintendo fame — with total funding above $400 million. Decart reportedly increased real-time video generation performance from 26 frames per second on standard GPUs to about 101 frames per second running on Amazon's Trainium chips.
Why Amazon wants it
Amazon is already Decart's biggest customer and a major supplier of its Trainium AI chips, and Decart's technology is reportedly deployed across Amazon businesses including Twitch, online retail and its movie and TV studios. Buying Decart outright would strengthen Amazon's custom silicon strategy — reducing its dependence on Nvidia GPUs and cutting the cost of AI computing as performance and chip availability become central to long-term profitability.
A crowded race for the startup
Decart has been through a strange few months of suitors. Nvidia — already an investor — entered exclusive talks to buy the company outright, which collapsed when a bigger offer appeared. The founders then chose Anthropic's bid — mostly Anthropic stock at a roughly $7 billion valuation, over Nvidia's higher offer — before Anthropic walked away in early September after due diligence. Earlier interest was also linked to SpaceX and cloud firm Nebius, though Elon Musk publicly denied that SpaceX was negotiating.
Investors reacted fast: Amazon shares rose about 0.68% in overnight Nasdaq trading to $264.21, with markets reading the talks as Amazon doubling down on AI infrastructure even as questions linger about the profitability of Big Tech's AI spending.
The takeaway
Three tech giants have now chased the same Israeli-founded AI startup in under four months — and the price keeps climbing even as two of them gave up. If Amazon closes at $7 billion, it would be one of the largest AI acquisitions of the year and a clear signal that the AI race is moving from models to the chips and software that run them.
Watch: IntereconomÃa's markets segment on Amazon's reported $7 billion Decart bid (Spanish-language coverage of the deal news and Amazon's after-hours share move).
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Digital Lemonade (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: Reuters, Startup Fortune, SKN