Anthropic is eyeing Decart and a major foothold in Israel
The potential $6 billion acquisition would give the AI company a team of roughly 100 employees and technology aimed at making AI systems faster and more efficient.
Anthropic is in talks to acquire Israeli AI startup Decart for about $6 billion. If completed, the deal would be not only the largest acquisition in the history of the Claude developer, It could mark Anthropic's first major step into Israel's technology ecosystem after months of quietly building relationships with the country's startups and talent.
The potential acquisition comes as Anthropic faces a problem shared by virtually every leading AI company: demand for its models is growing faster than the computing infrastructure available to serve it. Decart, which develops AI infrastructure and optimization technology alongside its own AI models, could help Anthropic extract more performance from existing hardware and make its systems more efficient.
But the Israeli dimension may prove just as significant.
Until now, Anthropic has largely kept its distance from establishing a physical presence in Israel, even as Israeli startups have become among the world's most aggressive adopters of generative AI. An acquisition of Decart would represent a dramatic acceleration, potentially giving Anthropic an established team, technology and base from which to build a much deeper presence in the country.
The deal remains in an early stage and could still fall through, according to people familiar with the negotiations cited by Bloomberg and Reuters. If completed, Decart's team is expected to join Anthropic's inference and performance organization, according to Reuters.
The possible transaction follows a series of smaller moves that suggest Anthropic has been laying the groundwork for a larger push into Israel.
Four months ago, Anthropic acquired Runhouse, an AI infrastructure startup whose founding team included Israeli entrepreneur Josh Lewittes and which counted Israeli venture capital firm Hetz Ventures among its investors. The deal was conducted primarily in Anthropic shares and was completed at a relatively modest valuation.
Guy Fighel, a partner and head of AI at Hetz Ventures, noted at the time that the acquisition was significant less for its size than for what it said about Anthropic's intentions.
“The company is looking very, very closely at the Israeli market,” Fighel told Calcalist at the time.
Runhouse had only around 10 employees and operated as a fully distributed company without a central office. Its technology focused on managing and allocating computing resources for organizations building and working with AI models. Fighel described it as the “picks and shovels” of the AI ecosystem, particularly relevant to a company like Anthropic that continuously trains and refines its models.
The acquisition was widely viewed as an acqui-hire, with the primary value lying in the founders and team rather than the company's intellectual property or customer base.
That logic looks considerably different when applied to Decart.
Founded in 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, Decart has raised approximately $450 million and employs about 100 people. Just three months ago, it raised $300 million at a valuation of roughly $4 billion, with Nvidia joining as a new investor. A $6 billion acquisition would therefore represent a substantial premium over that most recent valuation.
Decart's technology also fits directly into Anthropic's current priorities. The company works with AI developers to maximize performance across a range of chips, while its own technology has focused heavily on generating video in real time. Its Lucy model can edit live video, while its Oasis model generates simulated environments that can be used to train and test robotics and autonomous-driving systems.
The company has also developed technology capable of generating video at significantly lower costs than competing models, according to the information previously provided by Decart. That efficiency is potentially important at a time when the economics of AI increasingly depend not only on how powerful models are, but on how cheaply they can be run.
Reuters reported that Decart could help Anthropic absorb growing demand for its services. The potential deal is also unfolding as Anthropic prepares for a major public offering and works to expand its computing capacity.
Last week, Anthropic said it was hiring engineers with experience across the hardware and software stack to help co-design custom chips and AI models capable of making Claude run faster and more efficiently. Decart's expertise in optimizing AI performance could fit naturally into that effort.
The Israeli market, meanwhile, has become too large for the leading AI companies to ignore.
Recent data published by Anthropic showed Israel ranking first globally in per-capita usage of Claude among the working population, ahead of the United States and Singapore. Hundreds of Israeli startups are already building products around large language models, creating a potentially valuable market for AI providers.
Israel's importance is not limited to consumption. LinkedIn data cited in a Bank of America study showed the country ranking first globally in AI talent concentration and third in AI investment between 2013 and 2025, with approximately $19 billion invested during that period.
That combination has increasingly turned Israel into a battleground for the companies competing to become the infrastructure layer for the next generation of startups.
Anthropic has already begun trying to capture that market commercially. In February, it recruited Eli Hotoveli, previously a Security Sales Specialist for Israel at Google, to its go-to-market team for the Israeli market. Although Hotoveli remains based in Dublin, his mandate is explicitly focused on Israeli startups. At the time of his appointment, he wrote that he was joining Anthropic's GTM team and was excited to help Israeli startups use Claude for their products and teams.
The company has therefore been building an Israel strategy without making the kind of commitment that would come with opening a significant local operation.
The potential Decart acquisition could change that overnight.
There is an important competitive backdrop. OpenAI has also recently begun moving toward a more substantial presence in Israel. It appointed former AWS executive Eliran Ben David to deepen engagement with the country's startup ecosystem and is recruiting for an Israel-focused startup partnerships account manager, based in Paris.
OpenAI has also held a webinar aimed at Israeli startups and signed a strategic partnership with Sheba Medical Center, making it the first hospital outside the United States to gain access to OpenAI Healthcare.
The moves suggest that Israel is becoming another front in the increasingly intense competition between the leading AI companies.
However, a $6 billion acquisition of Decart would be something else entirely.
It would suggest that Anthropic is no longer content simply to sell Claude to Israeli companies. It would be putting a substantial stake in the people and technology being developed inside Israel itself.
And that could make Decart not only an acquisition, but the foundation of Anthropic's Israeli operation.
