Apple acquires AI-driven video compression startup WaveOne

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple has quietly acquired WaveOne, a California-based startup that develops AI algorithms for video compression.

Although Apple did not announce the acquisition, Bob Stankosh, WaveOne's former head of sales and business development, posted on LinkedIn about the sale of the startup to iPhone maker.

"After almost two years at WaveOne, last week we finalised the sale of the company to Apple," Stankosh posted.

"We started our journey at WaveOne, realising that machine learning/deep learning video technology could potentially change the world. Apple saw this potential and took the opportunity to add it to their technology portfolio," he added.

He thanked co-founders, Lubomir Bourdev and Oren Rippel as well as Craig Lytle, for helping to bring the idea to market and advancing this concept for commercial applications.

TechCrunch was first to report about the Apple acquisition for an undisclosed sum.

Leveraging the startup's AI-powered technology could "understand" a video frame, allowing it to prioritise faces.

The AI-powered video codec can help Apple deliver more efficient streaming on its services like Apple TV+.

WaveOne leveraged the latest advancements in machine learning and deep learning to bring unique and disruptive solutions and services to digital media, social and enterprise platforms.

The startup is behind Cloud-based AI Native video solutions which utilise machine learning and deep neural network (DNN) technology.