Apple has added one other AI startup to its acquisition list, Canada-based DarwinAI, which makes a speciality of vision-based technology to look at components during manufacturing to enhance efficiency. Bloomberg reported.
Although Apple or DarwinAI haven’t announced this deal, several members of the startup team joined Apple’s machine learning teams in January LinkedIn Profiles.
DarwinAI had raised over $15 million in funding in various rounds from investors including BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, Honeywell Ventures, Obvious Ventures and Inovia Capital. BDC Capital confirms on its website that it has secured an exit from DarwinAI, while Obvious Venture has updated its portfolio to reflect the startup’s acquisition.
BDC Capital and Obvious Venture didn’t comment on the story on the time of writing. Apple didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
As Bloomberg noted in its report, DarwinAI not only contributes to production efficiency but in addition uses techniques to create AI models smaller and faster. This might be useful for on-device generative AI features that Apple plans to introduce in iOS 18 this yr.
Compared to competitors like OpenAI, Google, Meta and Microsoft, Apple lags behind in releasing Gen AI-powered features. In February, Tim Cook said the corporate planned to introduce such features “later this yr.”
“We proceed to take a position an amazing amount of effort and time and look ahead to sharing the small print of our ongoing work on this area later this yr,” Cook said during a quarterly conference call with analysts.
Last yr, Apple’s top executive confirmed investments in genetic AI efforts. Apple’s job postings suggest the corporate is exploring adopting AI in several internal and external areas, including Siri, developer tools and customer support.
This article was originally published at techcrunch.com
