Top Stories This Morning: Anthropic Is Preparing Its Largest Acquisition; Cerebras Plummets After Earnings Report

Anthropic is in talks to acquire the AI startup Decart AI for approximately $6 billion—this could be the largest deal ever for the developer of Claude. Shares of AI chipmaker Cerebras fell more than 16% in after-hours trading after quarterly revenue rose 74% to $180.1 million but fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts. Read about these and other topics in our roundup of key events as of the morning of August 13.

Anthropic is in talks to acquire the AI startup Decart AI for approximately $6 billion, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. No decision has been made yet, and the deal could fall through. If it goes through, it will be Anthropic’s largest known acquisition.

Decart was founded in 2023 by three Israeli engineers. It develops technologies that reduce the cost of training AI models by improving chip efficiency and also works on generative video. In May, the company raised $300 million at a valuation of nearly $4 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Shares of chipmaker Cerebras fell more than 16% in after-hours trading following the release of its quarterly report. The company’s revenue rose 74% to $180.1 million but fell short of analysts’ expectations of $194.2 million. Revenue from the cloud business jumped approximately fourfold, while hardware sales declined by 28%. The adjusted gross margin fell from 46.5% in the previous quarter to 40.6% due to rising costs for renting computing power.

Cerebras has raised its revenue forecast for the full year 2026 from $855–865 million to $880–890 million and expects a gross margin of 41–43%.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been urging key developers in recent months to focus their efforts on Gemini and accelerate the model’s development amid competition from Anthropic and OpenAI, Reuters has learned. The new flagship version of Gemini has been delayed by two months after internal tests showed it lagged behind competitors, particularly in programming.

In early August, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced a major shake-up in the leadership of its AI division, Google DeepMind. Its head, Demis Hassabis, stepped down from his role as CEO, handing the position to his deputy, Koray Kavukcuoglu, and became chairman of the division with fewer managerial responsibilities. The reorganization is intended to strengthen the focus on Gemini and its commercialization, while some of DeepMind’s teams are being transferred into Google’s structure, according to Reuters.

Iranian authorities have stated that the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Tehran’s conditions are met, rejecting Donald Trump’s claims of U.S. “full control” over the strait, according to CNBC. Iran’s demands include an end to the U.S. naval blockade, the easing of sanctions, the withdrawal of troops, and the payment of reparations.

Ship traffic through the strait is at a nearly three-month low, the TV channel reports. According to Kpler, the average number of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz has dropped to about 13 per day, compared with 130 before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

— Japan's broad-based Topix index rose 0.8%, while the Nikkei 225 rose 1.6%.

— Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.2%, while mainland China's CSI 300 Index rose 0.6%.

— In South Korea, the KOSPI jumped 3.8%, and the KOSDAQ rose 0.9%.

— Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.3%.

— S&P 500 futures rose 0.1%, Nasdaq Composite futures rose 0.2%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures remained virtually unchanged.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor