A company most people have never heard of just became one of the bigger AI stories of the week - not because it shipped a new chatbot, but because of what someone is reportedly willing to pay for it. As of this week, Amazon is reportedly in talks to acquire Decart, a three-year-old Israeli AI lab, for around $7 billion - nearly double the roughly $4 billion valuation Decart raised money at just five months ago.
Decart doesn't build a chatbot at all. It builds what the industry calls "world models" - AI that generates and edits video and interactive environments live, frame by frame, fast enough to feel instant. If this deal closes, it tells you something about where the next phase of the AI spending boom is actually headed: not just bigger language models, but real-time generative video and simulation infrastructure, bought by the companies that already depend on it.
Quick summary: Amazon is reportedly in talks to acquire Decart, an Israeli AI lab, for about $7 billion - up from a roughly $4 billion valuation at its last funding round in May 2026. Decart was founded in September 2023 by CEO Dean Leitersdorf, CPO Moshe Shalev, and Chief Scientist Orian Leitersdorf, and has raised more than $450 million total, including a $300 million funding round in May 2026 backed by Radical Ventures, Nvidia, and others. Its two flagship products are Oasis, an interactive "world model" that generates playable environments live from user input, and Lucy, a real-time video model that edits and restyles live video streams with near-zero latency. Amazon is already a Decart customer, reportedly using its technology across Twitch, its online shopping experience, and its film and TV operations. As of publication, neither Amazon nor Decart has confirmed the deal; both companies have declined to comment.
What a "world model" actually is
Most generative video tools you've used - the kind that produce a finished clip from a text prompt - work offline: you wait seconds or minutes, then get a video file back. Decart's pitch is different: real-time generation and editing, fast enough to run inside a live video stream or an interactive experience without the viewer noticing a delay. Oasis, its interactive world model, generates dynamic, playable environments live from user input - effectively a video game world rendered by a model rather than by traditional game-engine code, reacting as you act inside it rather than being written in advance. Lucy, the companion product, works on real video: it can restyle a scene, swap a character's appearance, or transform a live camera feed instantly, while the stream keeps running.
Underneath both sits what Decart calls its DOS layer - inference software built to push GPU utilization higher specifically for this kind of generative-media workload, which is a different performance problem than serving a text-based chatbot. The company's research pitch is that it's been building toward one specific, hard constraint: pushing video-generation latency down to actual live frame rates, not just "fast for an AI model."
A 40x valuation jump in under two years
Decart's funding history is a useful illustration of how fast capital has moved into this specific corner of AI. The company was valued at just over $100 million in October 2024. By May 2026 - across four priced funding rounds in about nineteen months - that valuation had grown to roughly $4 billion, a 40x increase, with its most recent raise a $300 million Series B led by Radical Ventures and backed by, among others, Nvidia, Adobe Ventures, and Toyota Ventures. A reported $7 billion acquisition price, five months later, would represent nearly another doubling on top of that already dramatic run.
| Milestone | Date | Valuation / Deal Size |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | September 2023 | — |
| Early valuation | October 2024 | ~$100 million |
| Latest funding round (led by Radical Ventures) | May 2026 | ~$4 billion (raised $300M) |
| Reported Amazon acquisition talks | October 2026 | ~$7 billion (unconfirmed) |
Why Amazon specifically
This isn't Amazon shopping cold. Reporting on the talks describes Amazon as already Decart's biggest customer, using its real-time video and world-model technology across Twitch (Amazon's livestreaming platform), its online shopping experience, and its film and television operations. That existing relationship is the more plausible explanation for the price tag than pure speculative interest: Amazon has reportedly already seen what Decart's technology does inside its own products, which is a very different starting point than an outside buyer evaluating the company cold. It's also not Decart's first brush with an acquirer - reporting indicates Nvidia and, separately, Anthropic each held earlier talks to acquire the company, at one point including a reported ~$6 billion Anthropic offer, that didn't result in a deal before Amazon emerged as the reported front-runner. The strategic logic reported alongside the talks centers on two things - infrastructure flexibility (software that makes it easier to switch between different AI chip providers) and owning, rather than licensing, the real-time generation layer that several of its consumer products already depend on.
Treat this as a developing story, not a done deal - as of this week, both Amazon and Decart have declined to comment or confirm the reported terms, and reporting is explicit that the deal could still collapse or another buyer could emerge before anything is finalized.
Who this actually matters for
- Developers building live video or streaming products, who are watching whether a Decart-under-Amazon changes access to Oasis and Lucy's APIs, pricing, or exclusivity.
- Autonomous-vehicle and robotics teams, one of Decart's existing customer categories, who use simulated environments like Oasis to generate driving scenarios too dangerous to collect on public roads.
- Anyone tracking where AI capital is actually flowing in late 2026 - this deal, if it closes, would be a signal that real-time generative video and world-simulation infrastructure, not just bigger chatbots, is where some of the largest cash is now being spent.
01Is the Amazon-Decart deal confirmed?
No. As of this week, it's reported as being "in talks" by multiple outlets, with a reported price around $7 billion - but neither Amazon nor Decart has confirmed the terms, and the deal could still fall through or change before any official announcement.
02What does Decart actually make?
Two main products: Oasis, an interactive world model that generates playable virtual environments live from user input, and Lucy, a real-time video model that edits and restyles live video streams with near-zero latency. Both are built for real-time generative media rather than offline video generation.
03How is a 3-year-old company worth $7 billion?
Decart's valuation grew roughly 40x in about nineteen months - from just over $100 million in October 2024 to around $4 billion by its May 2026 funding round, backed by investors including Radical Ventures and Nvidia. A reported $7 billion acquisition price would be a further jump on top of that, reportedly reflecting Amazon's existing use of Decart's technology across Twitch, shopping, and its film/TV operations.
04Why would Amazon want this instead of building it in-house?
Reporting suggests Amazon is already Decart's biggest customer and has used its technology in production across multiple business lines, making an acquisition a way to own rather than license infrastructure it already depends on - plus gain software that makes switching between AI chip providers easier, a separate strategic priority Amazon has been reported to care about.
Deals like this are a reminder that the AI story isn't only about which chatbot answers your questions best - a huge, less visible part of the industry is building the infrastructure other AI products run on. If what you actually care about is comparing chatbots and AI assistants directly, LumiChats lets you chat with 40+ leading AI models side by side from one subscription, so you can judge quality for your own use case instead of just reading about who bought whom.
