Anthropic Pursues 850 Billion Won M&A, Accelerates Custom Chip Design [Global AI Briefing]

[Financial News] Anthropic is reportedly seeking to acquire AI startup Decart for $600 million, or about 852.18 billion won. The move appears aimed not only at developing AI models, but also at lowering AI computing costs and strengthening its in-house chip development capabilities.
According to Axios on the 13th local time, Anthropic is in acquisition talks with Decart, which develops software that optimizes AI chips, in a deal worth about $600 million.
If completed, it would be the largest acquisition since Anthropic was founded.
Decart's core technology optimizes software so AI models can run as efficiently as possible on specific semiconductors.
It focuses on improving performance across a range of computing hardware, including NVIDIA GPUs, Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), Amazon.com, Inc.'s Trainium, and AMD chips.

For Anthropic, the technology could be key to reducing the growing data center and GPU costs driven by surging AI demand.
In particular, observers say the acquisition could mark a full-scale push to strengthen its ability to design custom chips for Claude.
Earlier this month, Anthropic officially announced that it was building an in-house silicon team to design custom chips for Claude. It also said the custom chip project would proceed through a software-hardware co-design approach.
The Decart acquisition is therefore seen as part of a strategy to secure software technology that can improve computing cost efficiency for Claude chip design.
Anthropic is also preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in October. The company is believed to be trying to prove that it can boost profitability by expanding beyond model performance alone and into infrastructure and computing efficiency, amid some market skepticism that its valuation has limits if based only on AI model development.
Meanwhile, Decart is an Israel-based AI startup founded in 2023. In a funding round in May, it was valued at about $4 billion, or roughly 5 trillion won.
[email protected] Lee Gu-soon Reporter