Why is Amazon buying AI startup Decart for $7 billion?

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1. 1

   Decart (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 1, 2026Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “Decart (styled Decart AI) is an Israeli artificial intelligence company that develops real-time world models and the infrastructure to power them. Real-time world models are generative AI systems that produce interactive video and simulated environments frame by frame with low latency. Founded in September 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf, and Moshe Shalev, the company is headquartered in Tel Aviv, with additional offices in San Francisco and New York. In October 2024, Decart released Oasis, an AI model that generated a real-time, playable simulation of Minecraft. It also developed Lucy, a video-to-video model for editing video streams in real-time. In 2025, Decart became the first Israeli AI-focused unicorn company. As of 2026, it has a valuation of approximately $4 billion.”

2. 2

   Big Tech Acquisitions and Product Discontinuation

   Journal of Competition Law & Economics (Gautier & Maitry)Published Jul 25, 2024Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “The five largest firms by market capitalization, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft have massively acquired companies during the last decades, mainly but not exclusively young tech startups. Interestingly, most of the acquired products are discontinued post-acquisition. In this paper, we have collected data on the acquisitions of the big techs for a period of 7 years spanning from 2015 to 2021 and we analyze the evolution of the acquired firms’ products post-acquisition. To analyze the decision to continue or not a product post-acquisition, we classify acquisition in four categories: products that are still offered under their initial brand name, products integrated in the acquirer’s ecosystem, products that are no longer available and products that are killed by the acquirer. We use these classifications to provide detailed information and statistics on the discontinuation decision of the acquiring firm and we run Probit estimation to explain their determinants.”

3. 3

   Concorrência: acqui-hiring, cluster acquisitions, killer acquisitions e colusão algorítmica na dinâmica concorrencial entre big techs e startups de Inteligência Artificial

   Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) (Filho)Published Jan 1, 2026Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “The article analyzes the competitive dynamics between big tech companies and artificial intelligence startups, focusing on strategies of mergers, acquisitions, and technological integrations, including joint ventures, that reorganize digital markets. It examines practices such as acqui-hiring, cluster acquisitions, killer acquisitions, and algorithmic collusion, adopting an analytical-bibliographic method based on the literature on competition law and the digital-AI economy. The study argues that the concentration of data, computational infrastructure, human capital, and digital platforms may reinforce the market power of dominant firms, requiring stronger merger control and the improvement of regulatory and technological instruments to identify anticompetitive risks in integrated digital markets.”

4. 4

   Database-as-a-Service (DaaB) Sector Expansion: MongoDB’s acquisition of Voyage AI tech startup to moderate Hallucination

   IBU International Journal of Technical and Natural Sciences (Singh)Published Jun 26, 2026Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “To enhance innovation capabilities the big tech companies are following the path of mergers and acquisitions to get hold of external technologies. In this context, this deal in Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) domain is a landmark deal. The research contents of this article present the motivation (acquiring external technologies in short time) of MongoDB which has grown organically in the past, acquiring a high-tech startup Voyage AI at a very high exit evaluation cost. The research article concluded that the acquisition strategy of MongoDB is more similar to horizontal acquisition. Post-merger integration model of MongoDB is in sync with theories such as Resource Based View, Knowledge Based View, Open Innovation Theory, and Absorption Capacity Theory. This is because of technological, financial capabilities, and market reach of MongoDB (Colombo et al., 2021). The integration of technologies of two firms will reduce hallucination in AI applications and provide a platform for future innovations in AI domain. It will fill the technological gaps for MongoDB and may create technological disruption in future if MongoDB able to innovate with acquired new skills.”

5. 5

   AI Startup Business Models

   Business & Information Systems Engineering (Weber et al.)Published Dec 13, 2021Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “Therefore, this study investigates how AI startup business models potentially differ from common IT-related business models. First, a business model taxonomy of AI startups is developed from a sample of 100 AI startups and four archetypal business model patterns are derived: AI-charged Product/Service Provider, AI Development Facilitator, Data Analytics Provider, and Deep Tech Researcher. Second, drawing on this descriptive analysis, three distinctive aspects of AI startup business models are discussed: (1) new value propositions through AI capabilities, (2) different roles of data for value creation, and (3) the impact of AI technology on the overall business logic. This study contributes to our fundamental understanding of AI startup business models by identifying their key characteristics, common instantiations, and distinctive aspects. Furthermore, this study proposes promising directions for future entrepreneurship research. For practice, the taxonomy and patterns serve as structured tools to support entrepreneurial action.”