Apple Inc. has acquired Canadian artificial intelligence startup DarwinAI, adding technology to its arsenal ahead of a big push into generative AI in 2024. 

Cupertino

The release of Open AI's ChatGPT has accelerated the development of artificial intelligence and warnings about its impact on society.

Rise of AI

Apple Inc. has completed the acquisition of DarwinAI, a Canadian artificial intelligence startup. This strategic move is part of Apple's preparations for a significant venture into generative artificial intelligence, slated for 2024. The acquisition aims to enhance Apple's technological capabilities in the burgeoning field of AI.



Apple buys Canadian AI startup

Apple has made dozens if not more acquisitions related to artificial intelligence over the last decade. Let's not forget that Apple was actually first to this AI, this modern AI voice control market with Siri in 2011. Back then, it felt like Apple was four years ahead. Today, it feels like Apple's four years behind. In terms of this deal, this is another one of those small AI acquisitions. This is of a company called Darwin AI, and a lot of their technology is actually based in very high-tech, highly advanced research out of the University of Waterloo and some of their top machine learning and AI specialists. So a lot of this deal was about bringing those people in, lots of people with AI-related doctorates, PhDs, into Apple and making them pretty senior in the artificial intelligence organization. This deal was probably in the low tens of millions of dollars range, but that's not so important. What's important here is both the technology and the people they're bringing in. And so there's a lot of cool stuff that Darwin AI developed from being able to shrink down AI models and neural networks to a smaller size so they can run more efficiently on the iPhone itself versus entirely in the cloud. Mark, it's amazing. It's somewhat ironic that we often think of AI as something that would destroy jobs, but when it comes to building out AI, it's about actually buying the personnel, the people who are developing these goods. Is that what this acquisition is? Not an acquisition of technology, but of people? I think it's both. I think they certainly got the right people in there. Alexander Wong, he was a very big name and still is in the AI community in Canada, especially at the University of Waterloo. He's now a director at Apple, which is a senior position there in their AI organization. They're building out an office in Canada for artificial intelligence. They seemingly want AI people all over the world. This is a big component of the company right now. It's probably the only group within Apple that's growing at any significant or notable pace. So certainly that, but also they have what was called a generative synthesis engine, that being Darwin AI, to really shrink down AI models and technology to be able to run more efficiently on the phone. Now, why is that important? Apple wants these AI technologies to run on the device, to run on the iPhone, to run on the Mac, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the Vision Pro themselves. One, it's quicker to do it on the device using Apple's built-in chips versus streaming it from the cloud, but also doing it on device makes it much more privacy conscious. And as we know, privacy has been a key selling point for Apple's devices. So this fits that narrative quite well for the company. And they're able to do it at a fairly reasonable price. Mark, just taking a step back and not to rip up the script, but a little bit, veer off in a different direction. How much is this really the example of the expansion of big tech? It's not big acquisitions, it's the little ones, the sort of incremental ones that they can go up and they can buy up any potential competitors, at least intellectually, with respect to AI and the new developments. Is this the game plan? Well, it's an interesting question because as we know and talked about many times, Apple's acquisition strategy is not about buying major companies, major rivals, right? Apple has been allergic to buying those big companies for a couple of reasons. One, the ethos of the company is to buy smaller startups that they see could help them produce a particular feature by the company and turn it into a feature. Even Beats, that $3 billion acquisition, fine, they sell those Beats headphones, but a big part about that acquisition was buying Beats Music because they wanted to create a streaming music service and Beats Music is the very foundation of Apple Music. They bought a company a decade ago called PrimeSense that was a 3D sensor company, and they were able to take that acquisition and turn it into Face ID. They bought the company called Authentech in 2012 to enable Touch ID. So it's these smaller acquisitions to enable individual features or to help develop new services and software and applications. And I think Darwin AI, their synthesis model is going to help them develop on-device AI. This year, you're going to see them roll out some generative AI programs. They're gonna do more next year as well. And so certainly these acquisitions are to help with that. I'm not sure they're trying to squash any competition here. Certainly they maybe don't want Google or Samsung or someone else to get their hands on Darwin AI, but this is a textbook Apple deal, something sub a hundred million dollars, not too many people, helps them enable a new function.

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Sunshine Coast

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Lake Macquarie

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Bondi

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New York

Columbia University suspends pro-Palestinian protesters

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Kharkiv

Ukraine Invasion

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Columbia University's president said that talks with pro-Palestinian activists over a protest encampment on the Ivy League campus in New York City had reached an impasse and urged demonstrators to voluntarily disperse or face suspension.

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Madrid

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Riyadh

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Turin

Climate Crisis

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Beirut

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Sulphur

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Pescara

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Oklahoma

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Wakeley

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Canberra

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Tel Aviv-Yafo

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Donetsk

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Shanghai

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Rafah

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Lviv

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Canton

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Sderot

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Council of the City of Sydney

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Baku

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Rise of AI