Tim Cook has been standing on all the third rails this week. Days after hanging out with Donald Trump and attending the premiere of a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, just hours after the U.S. Border Patrol gunned down Alex Pretti, Apple announced it is acquiring an Israeli AI company. According to the Financial Times, Apple dropped close to a $2 billion bag to acquire Q.ai, a startup that specializes in tracking facial movements.
According to Bloomberg, Q.ai’s bread and butter is understanding silent communication, which it does by analyzing how a person’s facial muscles move as they are speaking. So, you know, nothing creepy or anything like that. The publication speculated that the startup’s technology could eventually make its way into Apple’s AirPods, which are expected to continue to get an infusion of AI features in the coming years. The tech could also find its way into FaceTime and future smart glasses and headset projects.
Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies and the company’s most senior Israeli executive, said in a statement to Ynet News that, “Q is an exceptional company, pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning technologies. We are excited to acquire the company led by Aviad and even more excited about what lies ahead.”
The Aviad in that statement is Aviad Maizels, the co-founder of Q.ai. He’s no stranger to Apple. Back in 2005, he started a 3D sensor company called PrimeSense that lent its technology to the early versions of Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect, a motion-sensing controller system. The company would eventually be acquired by Apple in 2013 and become the foundation for Face ID, Apple’s facial recognition authentication system that it released in 2017. Maizels hung out at Apple until a couple of years ago, when he set back out on his own to launch Q.ai.
There’s a decent chance the acquisition won’t sit particularly well with at least a portion of Apple’s workforce, which has been pushing for years now for Apple to divest from Israel. The company has been accused of matching worker donations to the Israel Defense Forces, which carried out what the United Nations determined was a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and to organizations involved in building illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The company has also operated research and development facilities in Israel for nearly a decade. According to a report from CTech, about 30% of Q.ai’s employees were drafted into IDF military service after Hamas carried out an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
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