{"id":441548,"date":"2026-01-29T20:29:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/441548\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:29:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:29:18","slug":"apples-buying-an-ai-company-that-listens-to-silent-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/441548\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s buying an AI company that listens to \u2018silent speech\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Apple\u2019s biggest acquisition ever is still its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2014\/5\/11\/5706766\/apple-beats-electronics-acquisition\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">$3 billion Beats buy in 2014<\/a>, but now the second biggest deal is bringing in <a href=\"http:\/\/q.ai\" rel=\"nofollow\">Q.ai<\/a>, a four-year-old AI audio startup. Apple did not disclose the terms, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gv.com\/news\/q-ai-joins-apple\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Financial Times<\/a> reports that Apple is spending $2 billion on the company. It also mentioned <a href=\"http:\/\/q.ai\" rel=\"nofollow\">Q.ai<\/a> patents for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geektime.co.il\/apple-acquires-qai-israeli-startup\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">optical sensor<\/a> technology that could be built into headphones or glasses to recognize \u201cfacial skin micro movements,\u201d allowing for non-verbal discussions with an AI assistant, for example.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The founders of <a href=\"http:\/\/q.ai\" rel=\"nofollow\">Q.ai<\/a> will join Apple, including CEO Aviad Maizels, who founded PrimeSense. Apple <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2013\/11\/24\/5141416\/apple-confirms-primesense-acquisition\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bought that company in 2013<\/a> and repurposed its Xbox Kinect technology to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/circuitbreaker\/2017\/9\/17\/16315510\/iphone-x-notch-kinect-apple-primesense-microsoft\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">power the iPhone\u2019s FaceID setup<\/a>. This time around, tech that understands whispered speech could connect to the generative AI-upgraded Siri or other Apple Intelligence features, and work with future AirPods, Vision Pro, iPhone, or Mac devices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">In a statement provided to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/apple-acquires-audio-ai-startup-qai-2026-01-29\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters<\/a>, Apple hardware exec Johnny Srouji called Q.ai \u201ca remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning.\u201d Google Ventures has backed the startup, and managing partner Tom Hulme <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gv.com\/news\/q-ai-joins-apple\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wrote in a blog post<\/a> about how this could help us find out \u201cwhat happens when the computer finally \u2018disappears\u2019 into our daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s biggest acquisition ever is still its $3 billion Beats buy in 2014, but now the second biggest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,1572,276,277,328,45,49,48,44,64,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-441548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-audio","13":"tag-business","14":"tag-ca","15":"tag-canada","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-tech","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}