Anthropic, the American company behind Claude and one of ChatGPT’s biggest rivals, was preparing to purchase Israeli AI company Decart for approximately $6 billion. The companies had signed an early agreement and completed weeks of serious negotiations.
Sources close to Decart say Anthropic wanted founders Dean and Orian Leitersdorf, Moshe Shalev and the company’s leading talent moved from Tel Aviv to San Francisco. Its plans reportedly included relocating approximately 100 employees from Decart’s Israeli development center.
The founders refused. They preferred to keep building their company and employing its team in Israel, even though the sale could have made each of them a billionaire.
The three founders are estimated to own approximately 64 percent of Decart together. At the proposed $6 billion price, their combined shares would have been worth nearly $4 billion, with each founder potentially receiving between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, mostly through Anthropic shares.
Decart was established in 2023 by young Israeli technology leaders who emerged from the IDF’s Unit 8200. The company creates technology that helps powerful AI systems operate faster while using expensive computer chips more efficiently. It raised $300 million in May at a valuation of nearly $4 billion, bringing its total funding above $450 million.
Bloomberg reported that Anthropic ended the acquisition talks after examining Decart’s technology and business. Neither company has publicly explained the decision, but sources close to Decart identified Anthropic’s relocation demand as the main obstacle.
The $6 billion sale may be gone, but Decart remains independent, its technology remains Israeli and its team remains in Israel.