Anthropic walked away from a $6 billion Decart deal

Anthropic walked away from talks to buy Decart, an Israeli inference-efficiency startup, for about $6 billion, Bloomberg reported on September 8. It would have been Anthropic's largest acquisition and its fifth deal of 2026. The offer was roughly a 50% premium on the $4 billion valuation Decart set in May, when Radical Ventures led a $300 million round.

A 20VC x SaaStr panel offered a read on why, on September 11. The panel's inference was that diligence likely found Decart's efficiency gains didn't generalize beyond video diffusion models. They also said the deal leaking publicly hurt Decart more than the termination itself did. Neither company confirmed that read; it's the panel's inference, not a disclosed finding.

If the panel's guess is right, the lesson for founders selling inference efficiency is narrow. A result that only holds for one model architecture is a point solution. It doesn't scale into a platform story, and buyers at this size diligence for that difference. For Decart, the terms and the doubts went public before the company could control the story, a bigger cost than the lost deal itself.