Anthropic Scuttles Plans to Acquire AI Company Decart

Anthropic has reportedly walked away from a $6 billion deal to acquire AI startup Decart.

That’s according to a report late Monday (Sept. 7) by Bloomberg News, citing sources familiar with the matter. Anthropic had been considering a deal and had conducted due diligence on Decart but ultimately chose not to pursue the acquisition, the sources said.

PYMNTS has contacted Anthropic for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

Bloomberg had reported last month that Anthropic was in discussions to buy Decart, which makes chips work more to lessen the cost of training and operating artificial intelligence (AI).

That report said the deal would have been Anthropic’s largest to date, and a relatively rare acquisition for the Claude maker. It would also help the company’s computing infrastructure keep pace with the surging adoption of its software.

Decart also offers world models designed to simulate the physical world and help businesses with applications like autonomous driving and eCommerce. In eCommerce applications, the company’s Lucy AI model lets customers virtually try on apparel and accessories.

The Bloomberg report noted that Anthropic has been spending on computing power to build new products and serve consumers as it prepares to go public in what could be the largest initial public offering (IPO) ever.

The company also recently released a set of blueprints for retailers for building AI agents to assist shoppers and help merchants with tasks like including inventory and pricing.

This is happening as an increasing number of consumers use AI for shopping, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Millennial Shopping Map: How AI, Search and Stores Compete Before Checkout.”

Research from that report found that while Google is still the most widely used product-discovery tool among millennials, at 57%, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has moved into second place at 41%, ahead of Amazon at 37%, YouTube at 29%, and Instagram and Gemini, each of which came in at 26%.

“The significance is less that artificial intelligence has displaced search, because it has not, than that it is competing with marketplaces and social platforms at the point where consumers narrow their choices,” PYMNTS wrote Tuesday (Sept. 8). “That puts product discovery outside the merchant’s own storefront earlier in the buying process.”

The research also illustrated why discovery should not be conflated with the transaction itself. Millennials shop using AI, traditional search, marketplaces, merchant apps and stores, with the mix changing depending on what they are buying.