Apple Q.ai Acquisition news: Apple has just recently announced that it has acquired Q.ai, an Israeli startup which is working on artificial intelligence technology for audio. The company has not shed light on the details of the terms of the deal with Q.ai. The startup was backed by funding from venture capitalists like Matter Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, Exor and GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. The startup was valued at $1.6 billion for the deal, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
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Apple is yet to shed light on how it plans to use the newly acquired startup Q.ai. Although the tech giant has mentioned that the startup has experience with new applications of machine learning that help devices in decoding whispered speech and enhance audio fidelity in demanding settings.
Q.ai's team with 100 employees and CEO Aviad Maizels and co-founders Yonatan Wexler and Avi Barliya will unite with Apple, the company iterated. Before this union, the current CEO of the startup Maizels founded a three-dimensional sensing firm, PrimeSense, which was sold to Apple as well in 2013. This PrimeSense deal helped Apple to move away from fingerprint sensors to facial recognition tech in its iPhones.
According to Reuters, Maizels said in a statement, "Joining Apple opens extraordinary possibilities for pushing boundaries and realising the full potential of what we’ve created, and we’re thrilled to bring these experiences to people everywhere.”
Apple has started employing AI, and last year it introduced a technology for the AirPods that allows speech translation between languages. In a statement, Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, expressed, "Q.ai is a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning."
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This deal could signal another move the tech giant is trying to make in the AI space, as it is a place where Apple is lagging behind major competitors like OpenAI and Google. This new tie-up could result in something new Apple might employ in its upcoming tech, as AI integration with handhelds and wearable devices is gaining momentum really fast. Just like its experiment with the AirPods, this could signal the start of something new.