Apple acquires startup that uses AI to compress videos

Apple has acquired another AI startup.

Bob Stankosh, the former head of sales and business development at WaveOne, shared on LinkedIn a month ago that the company finalised the sale to Apple.

WaveOne is a Mountain View-based startup founded in 2016. The startup wanted to use AI to power the decades-old paradigm of video codecs. WaveOne's website reportedly shut down in January and several ex-employees are now working in several machine learning teams at Apple.

Apple has made several AI-related acquisitions in recent years. It completed an acquisition of AI Music in 2022, a startup which relied on AI to offer personalised soundtracks and adaptive music. In 2020, Apple bought AI startup Xnor.ai for $200 million. The AI startup specialised in machine learning and image recognition tools that can be executed on low-power devices rather than relying on the cloud. Other acquisitions include U.K startup Spectral Edge for improving iPhone photography, and AI startup Silk Labs for its privacy-forward AI experience.

Source: TechCrunch