Anthropic, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company backed by Amazon and Google, has decided against proceeding with an acquisition of Israeli AI startup Decart that had been valued at approximately $6 billion, according to a report by Israeli business publication Globes. The report, titled “Anthropic has decided not to acquire Decart,” marked a significant reversal for what would have been one of the largest acquisitions in the rapidly consolidating AI sector this year. The breakdown of talks underscores the complexity of cross-border technology deals even as investor appetite for advanced AI capabilities remains intense and valuations across the sector continue to inflate.
Decart, founded in Israel and known for developing high-speed inference technology capable of running large language models with substantially reduced latency, had attracted significant attention from major players seeking to accelerate their own AI infrastructure. The startup’s core technology is designed to make AI model deployment faster and cheaper — capabilities that are increasingly valuable as the data center industry scales to meet surging computational demand. Decart had reportedly been in advanced discussions with Anthropic, and the $6 billion figure represented a premium that reflected how aggressively the market has priced frontier AI talent and proprietary inference optimisation methods.
A Deal That Unravelled Before Closing
The precise reasons for Anthropic’s decision to walk away have not been disclosed by either party, and neither Anthropic nor Decart issued formal statements at the time of reporting. Deals of this scale in the AI sector frequently encounter obstacles related to regulatory scrutiny, technology due diligence, and disagreements over post-acquisition structure, particularly when the target company is headquartered outside the United States. Antitrust regulators in both Washington and Brussels have grown increasingly watchful of consolidation among large AI developers, and any acquisition approaching the $6 billion threshold would likely have drawn formal review.
Anthropic itself is not a publicly traded company, having most recently been valued at around $61 billion following its latest funding rounds. The company has raised tens of billions of dollars in capital commitments from Amazon alone, with the cloud giant pledging up to $4 billion in investment, making Anthropic one of the best-capitalised private AI laboratories in the world. Against that backdrop, the decision to abandon the Decart deal may reflect a recalibration of strategic priorities rather than a financing constraint — though the $6 billion price tag would still represent a meaningful outlay for a private company whose path to profitability remains a subject of industry debate.
Implications for AI M&A and the Israeli Tech Sector
The aborted deal is a notable setback for Israel’s technology ecosystem, which has produced a disproportionate number of AI and cybersecurity startups relative to its size. Decart had been considered a flagship example of the country’s emerging AI infrastructure talent, and a successful acquisition by Anthropic at that valuation would have delivered a landmark exit for its investors and reinforced Tel Aviv’s standing as a hub for deep-technology development. The collapse of negotiations leaves Decart’s next steps uncertain, though the company’s underlying technology and the attention it attracted from a top-tier buyer are likely to sustain continued investor interest.
More broadly, the episode reflects a pattern emerging across AI mergers and acquisitions in 2024 and into 2025, where headline valuations and deal ambitions have frequently outpaced the appetite for completion. Several high-profile acquisition discussions in the sector have stalled at advanced stages, as buyers weigh the integration risks of absorbing highly specialised teams and the reputational exposure of large deals in a politically sensitive regulatory climate. For Anthropic, which competes directly with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta AI, maintaining its independent research identity may also factor into decisions about which capabilities to acquire externally versus develop in-house. The outcome of the Decart discussions will be watched closely by startups across the AI stack that are positioning themselves as acquisition targets in an environment where the gap between valuation expectations and deal execution has rarely been wider.