Amazon Weighs $7 Billion Purchase of AI Startup Decart

 | 

That’s according to a report Sunday (Oct. 11) by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing sources familiar with the matter. Those sources say a deal could come together soon, provided the talks don’t collapse and another contender doesn’t make an offer.

PYMNTS has contacted Amazon for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

Decart’s software makes it easier for developers to move between different AI chips, the report said, noting that this capability has become more important as companies scramble to acquire additional computing power.

Founded in 2023, Decart is also working on world models known as Lucy and Oasis, which can generate and simulate real-world 3-D environments, the report said.

The WSJ added that Amazon’s custom Trainium3 chip was developed to compete with Nvidia, which continues to dominate the market for graphics processing units, the specialized chips powering the AI boom.

Amazon Web Services offered Decart early access to the chip last year after meeting with the company and being impressed by its founders, the report added.

If the deal for Decart materializes, it would surpass Amazon’s $6.5 billion purchase of the MGM movie and television studio in 2022. The company also announced an approximately $11 billion deal for Starlink competitor Globalstar earlier this year.

According to WSJ, Israeli news outlet Calcalist reported recently that Decart was in advanced talks to be acquired by a major technology company. That followed reports from last month that Anthropic had walked away from a $6 billion deal to purchase Decart.

In other Amazon AI news, PYMNTS spoke last month with Mary Beth Westmoreland, the company’s vice president, Worldwide Selling Partner Experience, about its next AI push for merchants.

It’s an effort that’s less about offering sellers better answers and more about reducing how often they need to ask questions in the first place, that report said.

Westmoreland, in an exclusive conversation with PYMNTS, said Amazon is expanding its Seller Assistant from a conversational tool into something more akin to an operating layer for third-party merchants.

“We’ve gone from a smaller set of capabilities to onboarding just hundreds of them,” Westmoreland said.

Seller Assistant “doesn’t just answer questions” but can reason across inventory, pricing, advertising, demand and compliance; remember how a merchant operates; continuously monitor the business; and take action when granted permission, she added.

For Amazon’s millions of third-party sellers, that could transform AI from another item in their toolkits into the infrastructure through which they operate their businesses.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.