Amazon in talks to acquire AI startup Decart for $5.5 billion

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Oct 14, 2026, 10:01 UTC

Between October 12 and 14, 2026, reports emerged that Amazon is in talks to acquire the AI startup Decart at a valuation somewhere between $5.5 billion and $7 billion, with the lower figure attributed to CTech and the higher appearing in Simply Wall Street. The discrepancy in reported figures suggests that no final terms have been agreed. A notable piece of backstory is that Anthropic, the AI company in which Amazon has already made a substantial investment, reportedly evaluated and then walked away from its own potential deal with Decart before Amazon entered the picture.

The deal matters beyond its headline price tag for a few reasons. Amazon has been under pressure to sharpen its consumer AI products, particularly Alexa, which has lagged behind newer voice and conversational AI systems. Acquiring Decart could give Amazon proprietary model capabilities rather than continued dependence on external partners, even friendly ones like Anthropic. The fact that Anthropic passed on Decart first raises genuine questions about what Amazon sees that Anthropic did not, or whether Amazon's priorities for the technology, likely consumer-facing integration, simply differ from Anthropic's research and safety-focused direction.

None of the three camps have published reactions to this story yet. The Pro-AI camp would typically frame a deal of this size as a healthy signal of continued private investment in AI development and welcome Amazon's push to bring more capable AI into everyday consumer products. The Anti-AI camp would likely raise concerns about market consolidation, arguing that a small number of large technology companies are absorbing independent AI startups and reducing competitive diversity. The Middle Ground camp would probably call for scrutiny of the deal's terms and any regulatory review, while stopping short of either celebrating or condemning the acquisition outright.

The clearest thing to watch is whether Amazon and Decart reach a formal agreement and at which price, since the gap between $5.5 billion and $7 billion is large enough to indicate that talks are still at an early stage. Any regulatory filing or official announcement would also clarify what specific technology or team Amazon is primarily acquiring, which would sharpen the debate about whether Alexa or some other Amazon product line stands to benefit most.