Is Apple behind in the AI race? Maybe not.

Artificial Intelligence or AI seems to be the latest fad in technology. Despite that, there are a lot of things that are going on that are hard to ignore. Near omniscient facial and object recognition, chatbots that pass the uncanny valley and are convincing and so generate video and audio that comes out from the text.

While all this looks nice and great, the largest tech company in the world, Apple, seems to be inconspicuously quiet. Is Apple resting on its laurels and happy selling iPhones to kids? Further analysis shows that this is not the case.

What Apple is Doing in AI Space

In the AI space, Microsoft and Nvidia get all the press. Microsoft owns OpenAI, currently the company with the hottest AI intellectual property on the market. Nvidia on the other hand, sells the fastest AI workload processing chips on the market. And Apple? From the outsider’s view, they just selling iPhones and may be in trouble with the law because of that.

But Apple is a company that likes to move quickly and make big splashes when needed. It was reported that in 2023, Apple bought 31 AI startups. Compared to their closest rival, Alphabet (the company that owns Google Search) only bought 21 AI startups. With cash reserves that rivals top banks, they certainly have the deep pockets to build a war chest.

What did they acquire

Here are some of the companies that they acquired over time.

Brighter AI

• crunchbase

Brighter AI is a German company that specializes in protecting user identity using AI. It is reportedly in talks to be acquired by Apple although nothing is concrete yet. Crunchbase profile

Voysis

Voysis is an Ireland-based AI startup that specializes in speech recognition. Apple acquired in 2020 to improve Siri. Crunchbase Profile

WaveOne

WaveOne is a US-based company that specializes in digital media compression. In other words, it makes video files smaller so you can transmit video over low bandwidth or have higher quality video in the same bandwidth. Most likely use for this is for FaceTime calls or uploading videos to iCloud. Crunchbase Profile

Emotient

Emotient is a US-based company that specializes the emotion recognition in humans. By using AI to precept one’s emotions, applications can be tailored to this new data point for a better experience. Crunchbase profile

Laserlike

Laserlike is a US-based company that specializes in content search. More specific is discovery, tagging, and searching content within an organization. Crunchbase profile

Drive.AI

DriveAI is a US-based company that specializes in creating software for autonomous driving. It was birth from Stanford research and was acquired by Apple in 2009. Crunchbase profile

AI.Music

AI.Music is a UK-based company that specializes in musical suggestions using deep learning. Crunchbase profile

DarwinAI

Darwin is a Candian-based company that specializes in building AI models. The company describes itself as an AI-building AI company. It is one of the most recent acquisitions by Apple. Crunchbase

What This Means?

Apple as a company is a very secretive company. They don’t show their moves until a product is launched or updated. However, with their acquisition and their patent applications, one can gain some insight into what they are planning. People don’t equate Apple with AI yet, but with their appetite for buying AI companies, they sure are in the game without telling anyone they are in the game.

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Other Ecosystem Items

• Apple TV (Amazon) / Apple TV 4K (Amazon)
• AirTags (Amazon)
• HomePod Mini (Amazon)