Apple acquires AI startup Q.ai for reported $2B – News

Apple Inc. has acquired Q.ai, a startup that develops artificial intelligence software for wearables.

The Financial Times reported that the transaction is worth nearly $2 billion.

Israel-based Q.ai, officially Q (Cue) Ltd., develops AI software that can understand mouthed and whispered speech. It’s also capable of understanding audio produced in noisy environments. The software reportedly collects speech data by analyzing a user’s “facial skin micro movements.”

According to Reuters, audio processing isn’t the only use case that Q.ai’s software supports. A patent application filed by the company last year indicates that its technology can track health metrics such as the user’s heart rate and respiration rate. It’s believed the software is designed for use in devices such as smart glasses.

The acquisition may be part of an effort by Apple to enhance its wearables portfolio. Several of the company’s rivals are developing or have already launched wearables that consumers can control with voice commands. Q.ai’s speech detection technology could potentially enable Apple to equip its devices with similar capabilities.

One of the company’s biggest rivals in the wearables market is Meta Platforms Inc., which sells a popular series of smart glasses. The newest addition to the eyewear line can be controlled with not only voice commands but also hand gestures. The latter feature is powered by a smart wristband, the Meta Neural Band, that took the Facebook parent several years to develop.

OpenAI Group PBC, meanwhile, is reportedly developing a voice-controlled wearable of its own. The device is expected to launch in the second half of 2026.

Q.ai Chief Executive Officer Aviad Maizels earlier co-founded PrimeSense, a provider of depth sensors and image processing chips that Apple acquired in 2013. The iPhone maker used the technology to develop the Face ID biometric log-in system that ships with its handsets. 

Maizels co-founded Q.ai in 2022 with computer scientists Yonatan Wexler and Avi Barliya. The company’s team has since grown to about 100 employees. It financed that hiring with an undisclosed amount of funding provided by Alphabet Inc.’s GV startup fund, Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital and Aleph.

Job postings on Q.ai’s website indicate that the acquisition bought Apple not only software but also certain hardware assets. One of the listings states that Q.ai is developing an electro-optical module for use in a “mass-production-ready device.” Another posting indicates that the device runs a custom Linux distribution and a software stack written in C, a performance-optimized programming language.

The postings also contain information about the company’s flagship AI software. Notably, they indicate that the platform is powered at least partly by models optimized to run on embedded devices. Running neural networks on-device is more cost-efficient than hosting them in the cloud, which could help Apple drive down the cost of providing AI features to users.

The acquisition comes about two years after the iPhone maker purchased another low-profile AI startup called DarwinAI Corp. The deal bought it computer vision software for detecting manufacturing flaws in printed circuit boards.

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