Consumer electronics producer Apple has acquired US-based artificial intelligence platform developer Xnor.ai for approximately $200m allowing NGP Capital, the venture capital firm spun off by smartphone maker Nokia to exit, GeekWire reported yesterday.
Founded in 2017, Xnor has developed technology that makes it possible to run machine learning and image recognition tools on low-power devices, removing the need to upload data to the cloud. It has also built a tool that allows developers to easily add AI functionality to apps.
The company was spun out of Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), which was established by Paul Allen, the late co-founder of software producer Microsoft. It advances research conducted by Ali Farhadi, an associate professor at University of Washington.
Apple did not confirm the deal but GeekWire projected that Xnor’s image recognition tools could be added to future iterations of its iPhone and webcams. The edge computing capabilities of Xnor’s platform are also thought to tie in with Apple’s position on data privacy.
NGP Capital participated in Xnor’s $12m series A round in mid-2018, which was led by Madrona Venture Group and also backed by Autotech Ventures and Catapult Ventures. The company had received $2.6m in seed funding from Madrona and AI2 the year before.
