A filing with the European Commission reveals that Apple is recruiting staff from Huxe and has secured a non-exclusive licence to its intellectual property, without acquiring the start-up.
Apple has entered into an agreement to offer positions to "certain Huxe AI employees" and obtain a non-exclusive license on the start-up intellectual property, according to a deposit forwarded to the European Commission and identified by MacRumors, reports TechCrunch. Huxe was founded by developers who worked on the podcasts generated by NotebookLM's IA, the Google tool recently renamed Gemini Notebook.
A reverse "acqui-hire"
The formula, now common in AI, allows a large group to recover the talents and technology of a young grower without buying it, which a priori attracts less attention from competition authorities. Huxe had announced on 21 May the termination of its service, the withdrawal of its application from the shops and the deletion of its users' data; Apple notified the agreement in Brussels on 9 June, but only became public in October.
The document does not specify who received an offer or what Apple intends to do with this technology. TechCrunch notes that Huxe's shutdown came after Spotify announced its own podcasts generated by IA: Apple may want to add similar features to its Podcasts application.
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