Key points
- A spelling mix-up with a public company
- Decart already runs on Amazon's chips
- What Decart's software actually does
Amazon (AMZN) is in talks to acquire Decart, an AI startup whose software makes AI models run faster on different chips, in a deal that could value Decart at around $7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. A deal could come soon if the talks hold and no other bidder emerges.
At least one report on Sunday spelled the startup's name as Descartes. Decart has no connection to Descartes Systems Group (DSGX), a Canadian logistics software company listed on the Nasdaq.
Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May, based on PitchBook data, up from $3.1 billion when it raised $100 million in August 2025. Amazon and Decart didn't respond to Reuters' requests for comment on Sunday.
Decart already works with Amazon
Decart raised $300 million on May 18 in a round led by Radical Ventures, with Nvidia (NVDA) joining as a new investor. Decart's announcement called Amazon "one of Decart's strategic customers."
Decart also has a commercial agreement and a joint sales effort with Amazon Web Services. Its live video model, Lucy 2, runs on Trainium3, Amazon's in-house AI chip, according to the company. Nafea Bshara, a vice president at Amazon's chip design unit, Annapurna Labs, said in the announcement that Decart was "among the first in the world to optimize on Trainium3."
In September, Amazon picked Qualcomm (QCOM) to design custom AI inference chips for its data centers.
Decart sells chip software and video models
Decart's main infrastructure product is the Decart Optimization Stack, or DOS. The company says DOS speeds up AI training and inference on Nvidia GPUs, Google TPUs, and Amazon Trainium chips, and it licenses the software to cloud providers and AI labs. Decart says its latest stack can process more than 1,600 tokens a second for AI agents. The announcement doesn't provide enough detail to compare that figure directly with competing systems.
Decart also builds two models on top of DOS. Lucy edits live video in real time, and Oasis generates simulated environments used to train and test robots and self-driving systems. Dean Leitersdorf is Decart's CEO, and he co-founded the company with Moshe Shalev.
Anthropic walked away last month
Anthropic, which Amazon has backed with about $8 billion, explored buying Decart in August in a deal that could have been worth about $6 billion. Anthropic dropped the pursuit in September after doing due diligence.
Amazon shares closed at $262.43 on Friday, October 9.
