The Cupertino-based company never officially reports on company purchases throughout the year, unless one of them, such as Shazam, is highly impactful. According to the newspaper The Information, citing sources related to the purchase, Apple bought Artificial Intelligence startup Silk Labs earlier this year.
As usual, the details of the purchase have not been disclosed, but everything seems to indicate that is an investment in the future for Apple. Silk Labs had a dozen employees working at the time of its acquisition. According to the firm PitchBook, so far it had raised $ 4 million in funding.
Slik Labs based in San Mateo, California, was founded by three engineers who had previously worked at the Mozilla Foundation developing Firefox OS, the operating system that wanted to be an alternative to iOS and Android. This startup began its activity in 2016 focusing on creating an operating system focused on Artificial Intelligence and designed to be a platform for connected smart devices. According to one of its founders, "IoT devices are not very smart, they have very basic and simple software and it is going to change."
The Silk Labs website provides a brief introduction to what the company is and what it does, along with its goals for the future. Silk is also known for a project she launched on Kickstarter called Sense, a security camera capable of recognizing users and adjust the connected devices according to their preferences. Despite the project being a success, Silk canceled production in June 2016.
We do not know what Apple's plans are with this new purchase, but if we look at the path that most technology companies are following, it is not surprising that this technology sooner or later is implemented in the company's operating systems.
