Apple secretly acquires Danish machine learning startup

Apple secretly bought a Danish visual effects startup Spektral for over $30 million last year, the media reported.

According to a report in Fortune citing Danish daily Borsen on Thursday, the acquisition of the Copenhagen-based startup in December 2017 was a hush-hush affair.

Apple has been to investing in Augmented Reality (AR) for some time.

According to The Verge, the latest acquisition may be aimed to boost the iPhone's AR features for Memoji or FaceTime as Apple reportedly plans to launch an AR headset soon.

Spektral uses Machine Learning (ML) and computer vision techniques to "cut outa people from video backgrounds in real time on smartphones.

"Our pioneering and unique technology is based on state-of-the-art Machine Learning and computer vision techniques.

"Combining deep neural networks and spectral graph theory with the computing power of modern GPUs, our engine can process images and video from the camera in real-time (60 fps) directly on the device," read the information on its website.

Apple acquired German eye-tracking startup SensoMotoric Instruments last year and AR lens company Akonia Holographics last month.

--IANS

na/ksk