Amazon Reportedly in Talks to Buy Decart for About $7 Billion

Amazon is in discussions to acquire artificial intelligence startup Decart for about $7 billion, according to a report citing people familiar with the talks. No agreement has been confirmed, and the negotiations could still collapse or another buyer could emerge. The reported price would be substantially above Decart’s nearly $4 billion valuation in May, when it raised $300 million in a funding round led by Radical Ventures, according to PitchBook data cited in the reporting. NVIDIA joined that round as a new investor. Decart develops software and AI models. Its DOS platform is designed to optimize AI workloads for different processors, allowing developers to move models between hardware platforms. The company also makes Lucy, a model for editing live video, and Oasis, which creates simulated environments that can be used in areas including robotics training. The potential acquisition could give Amazon access to Decart’s software for running AI workloads across chips. One report said DOS supports NVIDIA GPUs, Google’s TPUs and Amazon’s Trainium processors. The extent to which those capabilities would factor into any deal has not been disclosed.