Report: Amazon in talks with AI startup Decart over possible $7B acquisition

Report: Amazon in talks with AI startup Decart over possible $7B acquisition

Amazon.com Inc. is reportedly engaged in discussion over the potential acquisition of artificial intelligence developer Decart.ai Inc. in a deal that could be worth up to $7 billion.

Decart has developed software that makes it easier for developers to run their AI models on different processors, which has proven to be a valuable capability as companies scramble to secure the computing infrastructure for their AI applications.

A report in the Wall Street Journal cites people familiar with the talks as saying that a deal could be wrapped up in the coming days, assuming the discussions don’t break down or another suitor doesn’t emerge.

Decart most recently raised $300 million at a $4 billion valuation in May, bringing its total amount raised to over $400 million. Its main investors include Radical Ventures, Nvidia Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Benchmark. The startup was founded in 2023 by a trio of Israeli software engineers, including brothers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev.

The company has developed software called DOS, which can help developers to speed up AI training and inference workloads by optimizing their neural networks to run on a specific processor. In most AI workloads, developers must optimize a neural network for the chip they plan to run it on. This process used to take months, but with DOS, the workflow necessary to do this can be compressed into just a couple of weeks. Because of this, companies can use Decart’s software to shift AI workloads to different processors if their requirements change, or if chip availability becomes an issue.

In addition to DOS, Decart is also a model developer, responsible for creating the Lucy and Oasis world models, which are designed to generate and simulate realistic three-dimensional environments for video games, robotic training and other use cases.

It’s still possible another suitor could emerge and outbid Amazon. Last month, Anthropic PBC was reportedly engaged in talks to buy Decart, according to a report by Bloomberg. However, it ultimately pulled out of a reported $6 billion deal after conducting due diligence on the startup. It’s not clear what ultimately dissuaded Anthropic from pursuing a deal.

Decart’s DOS platform could be very useful for Amazon Web Services Inc., the cloud computing arm of Amazon, which offers its own custom AI processors in Trainium3, for training AI models. Decart reportedly obtained early access to the Trainium3 chips last year before they became more widely available, following a meeting with senior AWS engineers, who were reportedly very impressed by the startup’s founders.

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