Anthropic, the San Francisco-based foundation model company behind Claude, is in late-stage discussions to acquire Decart, an AI infrastructure startup, for approximately $6 billion, according to reporting from Quartz. The deal, if closed, would be among the largest AI acquisitions to date and marks a shift in how frontier labs think about vertical integration. No transaction has been announced. Both companies declined comment.
Decart builds specialized infrastructure for AI workloads, with a focus on real-time inference optimization and hardware-software co-design. The startup raised a Series A in early 2023 at a $180 million post-money valuation and counts Sequoia Capital and Benchmark among its backers. Anthropic's interest comes as the company's inference costs on Claude models remain elevated relative to revenue per API call, a structural headwind that has driven gross margins below 40 percent in recent quarters, per sources familiar with the company's financials. Owning the inference stack would allow Anthropic to reduce reliance on third-party compute providers and potentially license optimized infrastructure to other labs.
The timing is worth noting. Anthropic raised $4 billion from Amazon in March 2024 and another $2 billion from Google in November, bringing total capital raised to over $7 billion. A $6 billion acquisition would consume most of the recent fundraising and signal that CEO Dario Amodei views infrastructure control as mission-critical, not optional. The move also comes as competitors like OpenAI and Google DeepMind have begun building custom silicon and inference pipelines in-house. Anthropic has historically leased capacity from AWS and Google Cloud; acquiring Decart would allow the company to design purpose-built systems for Constitutional AI training and inference, where latency and cost per token are the primary variables.
The broader context includes a parallel trend among Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI infrastructure. Riot Platforms announced a deal this week to provide data center capacity to Anthropic, converting idle mining facilities into AI compute clusters. This convergence of crypto infrastructure and AI workloads reflects a structural oversupply of GPU-ready data centers and a willingness among miners to swap energy arbitrage for long-term AI contracts. If Anthropic closes the Decart acquisition, it would gain both software optimization and potential pathways to cheaper, miner-sourced compute—a combination that could shift gross margins by 10 to 15 percentage points within eighteen months.
Operators and allocators should watch three follow-on events. First, whether Anthropic files an amended S-1 or updated corporate structure notice within 60 days, which would indicate imminent closing. Second, whether Sequoia or Benchmark exit their Decart positions at the $6 billion valuation or roll equity into Anthropic's next funding round, signaling confidence in the strategic rationale. Third, whether OpenAI or Google DeepMind announce competing infrastructure acquisitions within the next 90 to 120 days; both companies have raised or committed capital in excess of $10 billion over the past year and may view vertical integration as a requirement, not a choice.
The deal, if it closes, will be the largest test of whether foundation model companies can own the full stack—model, inference, and hardware—without diluting focus or burning capital faster than revenue scales. Anthropic's next earnings or funding disclosure, expected in Q2 2025, will show whether the bet paid off.
The takeaway
Anthropic's $6 billion Decart talks test whether frontier labs can own compute infrastructure without eroding capital efficiency before revenue catches up.
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