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Report: Apple has secretly acquired AI-based visual effects startup Spektral for $30M
A new report claims that Apple Inc. last year quietly acquired a Copenhagen-based machine learning startup called Spektral for $30 million.
The story appeared today in Danish business journal Børsen and was picked up by Fortune. It’s seemingly given credence by the fact that Spektral co-founder Toke Jansen, whose research at the Technical University of Denmark served as the basis for the startup’s technology, now lists Apple as his employer on LinkedIn.
Spektral launched in 2014 under the name CloudCutout with a service that used artificial intelligence to speed up image editing. The offering focused on automating the process of cropping people and objects from pictures, a normally time-consuming task that designers have to do by hand. The AI algorithms developed by Janese and his team were described as precise enough to isolate individual strands of hair from their background.
In mid-2017, the startup rebranded and raised $2.8 million in funding to pursue a new mission: applying its technology to videos. Spektral’s website, which is still online, makes some bold claims about the software. It’s touted as efficient enough to process footage from a smartphone’s camera in real time at a rate of 60 frames and using only the built-in graphics card.
It’s not hard to see why Apple would be interested in the technology. Spektral’s algorithms could potentially help enhance the augmented reality features in iOS, as well as enable app developers to build more powerful services.
The original Børsen report about the acquisition claims that it took place last December. Also in 2017, Apple confirmed that it had bought SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH, a German maker of eye-tracking technology for augmented and virtual reality headsets.
More recently, the iPhone maker picked up a company called Akonia Holographics LLC with roots in the famed Bell Labs research group. Akonia developed a specialized lens designed for use in AR headsets that it described as cheap to produce, thin and lightweight. The acquisition is particularly notable because Apple is said to be working on a homegrown AR system that could reportedly start shipping as early as 2020.
Photo: Apple
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