By PYMNTS | October 11, 2026
Amazon is reportedly in advanced discussions to acquire artificial intelligence startup Decart in a transaction valued at approximately $7 billion, marking a significant potential expansion of the tech giant’s infrastructure and development capabilities in the generative AI sector.
According to a report published Sunday by The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with the ongoing matter, a definitive agreement could materialize soon, provided that the current negotiations do not collapse and no rival contender steps forward with a more aggressive counter-offer. PYMNTS has reached out to Amazon for official comment on the reported acquisition talks, but has not yet received a response from the company.
Founded in 2023, Decart has quickly captured the attention of major technology players by developing specialized software designed to make it significantly easier for developers and enterprise clients to migrate workloads seamlessly between different artificial intelligence chips. This capability has grown increasingly critical across the technology landscape as corporations scramble to secure and optimize additional computing power amid a persistent global shortage of advanced hardware.
In addition to its interoperability software, Decart is actively developing sophisticated world models known as Lucy and Oasis. These advanced systems possess the unique capability to generate and simulate complex, real-world three-dimensional environments in real time, pushing the boundaries of spatial computing, simulation, and interactive generative media.
The potential acquisition intersects closely with Amazon’s broader strategy to challenge Nvidia, which continues to maintain a dominant foothold in the market for graphics processing units and specialized chips powering the global artificial intelligence boom. To bolster its competitive position, Amazon developed its custom Trainium3 chip. Last year, Amazon Web Services offered Decart early access to this proprietary chip after leadership meetings left Amazon executives profoundly impressed with the startup’s founding team and technological roadmap.
If the multi-billion-dollar deal for Decart successfully crosses the finish line, it would comfortably surpass Amazon’s $6.5 billion acquisition of the historic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie and television studio, which closed in 2022. It would also follow another major investment strategy by the company earlier this year, when Amazon announced an approximately $11 billion deal to acquire Globalstar, a prominent competitor to satellite internet provider Starlink, further expanding its telecommunications and infrastructure ambitions.
The Wall Street Journal noted that the latest development follows recent reporting from Israeli news outlet Calcalist, which indicated that Decart was locked in advanced discussions regarding a potential acquisition by a major technology enterprise. That report arrived on the heels of industry revelations from the previous month stating that rival AI firm Anthropic had ultimately walked away from a proposed $6 billion agreement to purchase Decart, clearing the path for other major players to court the startup.
While evaluating its hardware and infrastructure acquisitions, Amazon has concurrently been advancing its artificial intelligence strategy on the commercial front, particularly concerning the merchants and third-party vendors that populate its sprawling marketplace. In an exclusive conversation last month with PYMNTS, Mary Beth Westmoreland, Amazon’s vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Experience, detailed the company’s next major generative AI push tailored specifically for merchants.
The initiative represents a fundamental shift in how the platform deploys technology, focusing less on providing better automated answers to common inquiries and more on actively reducing the frequency with which third-party sellers need to ask operational questions in the first place. Westmoreland explained to PYMNTS that Amazon is actively expanding its Seller Assistant tool from a basic conversational chatbot into an intelligent operating layer capable of managing complex tasks for third-party merchants.
The evolution has involved scaling the platform’s utility from a modest set of basic features to handling hundreds of advanced operational capabilities simultaneously. Westmoreland emphasized that the upgraded Seller Assistant does not simply respond to inquiries. Instead, the system is engineered to reason comprehensively across inventory levels, pricing strategies, advertising campaigns, shifting consumer demand, and regulatory compliance. Furthermore, the technology is designed to remember the specific operational preferences of an individual merchant, continuously monitor the health of the business in real time, and execute authorized actions autonomously when granted permission by the seller.
For the millions of third-party merchants who rely on Amazon’s marketplace to sustain their businesses, the integration of advanced artificial intelligence threatens to transform AI from a supplementary tool in their software kit into the foundational infrastructure through which they run their day-to-day operations.
