With Anthropic and OpenAI pursuing mega initial public offerings, a race among Big Tech companies to acquire leading AI firms is intensifying elsewhere. The mood suggests the heat will build further.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, U.S. venture investment deal value reached $515.8 billion through the third quarter of 2026, but cash returns to investors remain stalled.

A Venture Monitor report jointly published by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) showed only 18 companies went public in the third quarter.

There were 992 private unicorns with valuations of more than $1 billion. Given that not everyone can simply choose to go public, mergers and acquisitions could be one of the more likely exit routes for investors. That is why Big Tech is moving faster to secure unicorn AI startups.

The WSJ reported Amazon is in talks to acquire AI software startup Decart for $7 billion. Decart helps developers build across a range of AI chips.

Amazon appears to be pursuing the Decart deal as part of efforts to compete with Nvidia with its in-house Trainium AI chips. The acquisition is expected to bolster Amazon's strategy of using its Trainium chips, for which it secured access as early as 2025, to challenge Nvidia. Decart secured access to Trainium chips in 2025.

Decart is also developing a world model called Oasis 3. The company says Oasis 3 creates a realistic and controllable multi-view simulation environment that lets robots learn, act and improve performance, starting with autonomous vehicles.

The WSJ said it is not hard to guess how Amazon, unlike other Big Tech firms, will use Oasis 3 technology because it runs businesses directly in the real world.

Nvidia's moves are also drawing attention as it has emerged as a major player in tech M&A. Nvidia has recently shown aggressive moves to expand its stake in the open-weight AI model arena led by Chinese companies.

Nvidia said in September it would acquire open-source AI model repository Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. It also signed a $6 billion licensing deal with coding AI startup Poolside, which includes hiring most of Poolside's engineers.

More recently, Nvidia has been considering options including making additional investments in open-source AI model developer ReflectionAI or acquiring the company outright.

Nvidia is already a major investor in ReflectionAI with an $800 million investment. ReflectionAI was founded in 2024 by Misha Laskin (미샤 라스킨) and Ioannis Antonoglou (이오아니스 안토노글루), both former Google DeepMind researchers, and on the 5th unveiled its first open-weight model, Beam.

The Financial Times reported the talks are at an early stage. The deal structure could take several forms. One option under review is an "acqhire" that avoids an acquisition by hiring employees and buying only the technology rights, considering it could sidestep regulatory scrutiny.

Salesforce has also recently agreed to acquire AI customer research startup Listen Labs. Terms were not disclosed, but the previously discussed purchase price was said to be about $2 billion. Listen Labs has developed AI agents that conduct customer research. The platform finds suitable research participants, conducts interviews, analyzes responses and simulates actions. Its participant recruitment network has more than 50 million people and it can conduct interviews in more than 120 languages. Salesforce also bought AI customer agent startup Fin in June for $3.6 billion.

Moves by tech companies seeking to secure Decagon, an AI agent startup specializing in customer service, are also taking shape. Business Insider reported Decagon is holding early acquisition talks with companies including ServiceNow.

The report said Decagon held early talks on a sale with companies other than ServiceNow. If no deal is reached, Decagon could seek new funding. In an investment round earlier this year, Decagon was valued at $4.5 billion. Founded in July 2023, Decagon provides AI agents that automate customer support work for enterprise clients using generative AI. It counts Delta Air Lines, Snapchat and Ticketmaster as customers.