Amazon in talks to buy AI video startup Decart for $7B

Amazon is in talks to acquire the AI startup Decart in a deal that could value it at around $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on October 11, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. The Journal's account, relayed by Reuters, said a deal could come together soon if the talks do not collapse and no rival bidder emerges. Neither Amazon nor Decart has confirmed the discussions.

Decart does two things that matter on this beat. Its Lucy model edits live video in real time, and its Oasis model generates simulated 3D environments used to train and test robotics and autonomous-driving systems, according to Quartz. The company also sells software that helps developers move AI workloads between different chips, which the Journal says matters more as companies race to secure computing power. Amazon built its own AI accelerator, Trainium3, to compete with Nvidia, and AWS gave Decart early access to the chip in 2025 after meetings with the founders impressed Amazon's team, according to the Journal.

The price is the sharp number. Decart was valued at nearly $4 billion in May 2026, in a $300 million round led by Radical Ventures that brought Nvidia in as a new investor, per the Journal. A $7 billion sale would be roughly 75 percent higher in under five months. It would top Amazon's $6.5 billion purchase of the MGM film and TV studio in 2022 and sit below the roughly $11 billion Globalstar deal Amazon announced earlier this year, the Journal reported.

This is not the first approach. Bloomberg reported in August that Anthropic was in talks to buy Decart for about $6 billion, and by September Anthropic had decided against the acquisition after due diligence, according to Quartz. Nvidia had explored a deal earlier, and Decart's founders turned down a higher offer from Nvidia, The Next Web reported. The startup was founded in 2023 by brothers Dean and Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, is headquartered in San Francisco, and has a team in Tel Aviv, according to The Next Web.

What it means for creators stays conditional. Real-time video editing and world models are the two Decart capabilities closest to AI video work, but a price this far above Decart's last valuation suggests Amazon is buying compute flexibility and inference software first and creative tools second. If the deal closes, Decart's models and its team would sit inside AWS, and how much of that reaches the public would depend on terms nobody has published.

The next catalyst is confirmation from either company. The Journal reported a deal could be announced in the near term, with a competing bidder still possible.