{"id":453418,"date":"2026-05-21T20:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/453418\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T20:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:16:09","slug":"apple-animatos-expertise-and-intellectual-property-acquired-in-structured-acqui-hire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/453418\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple: Animato&#8217;s Expertise And Intellectual Property Acquired In Structured Acqui-Hire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apple has quietly agreed to hire employees and license intellectual property from Animato, a startup focused on software for creating virtual avatars used in video chats and tutoring, according to a European Commission filing highlighted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2026\/05\/19\/apple-acquires-animato\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">MacRumors<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The transaction, filed under the European Union\u2019s Digital Markets Act in January 2026, appears to be structured as an acqui-hire arrangement. Under the agreement, Apple can extend employment offers to select Animato employees while also receiving a non-exclusive license to the company\u2019s intellectual property and acquiring its patent applications.<\/p>\n<p>Animato was founded in October 2022 by Francesco Rossi, who previously spent seven years working at Apple before launching the company.<\/p>\n<p>The startup became known for its app, Call Annie, which launched in April 2023 and gave ChatGPT a real-time animated avatar face that enabled users to hold video-style conversations with the AI assistant. The platform later expanded into language learning with avatar tutors for English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean.<\/p>\n<p>Animato also launched Animato Studio, a macOS virtual camera app that allowed users to appear as fantasy characters and anime avatars during video calls and livestreams.<\/p>\n<p>Following the acquisition, both App Store listings have reportedly been removed, and the Call Annie website says the application has been discontinued.<\/p>\n<p>The deal marks Apple\u2019s second acquisition involving digital avatar technology in just over a year. In January 2025, Apple acquired technology, intellectual property, and physical assets from TrueMeeting, which specialized in digital avatars for meetings.<\/p>\n<p>Apple already offers avatar-focused experiences through Memoji on the iPhone and Personas on the Apple Vision Pro, which creates realistic digital representations of users for FaceTime calls.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple has quietly agreed to hire employees and license intellectual property from Animato, a startup focused on software&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[211660,670,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-453418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-animato","tag-apple","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}