Apple acqui-hires Huxe team and licenses its audio tech
According to iThome and AIbase, Apple has struck a "reverse acqui-hire" deal with personalized-audio startup Huxe: it made employment offers to certain Huxe employees and obtained a non-exclusive license to the startup's intellectual property, filing the transaction with the European Commission on June 9. Huxe was founded by developers who had built the AI-generated podcast feature in NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook); its app shut down on May 21, pulling from the app stores, ending service and deleting user data. Apple's filing describes Huxe as a mobile app for building personalized audio content, but does not name which employees received offers, whether they accepted, or what Apple plans to do with the team and technology.
Bringing Huxe's podcast-generation team and tech in-house could give Apple's Podcasts app personalized audio features, and shows large firms using buy-the-team-not-the-company deals to add AI talent.
圖片來源:
蘋果
近日一份公告文件顯示，蘋果於今年春天招募了Google NotebookLM前團隊成員創立的AI podcast App業者Huxe核心成員並取得技術授權。
根據歐盟列出大廠申報的收購清單，蘋果在今年6月向Huxe AI提出員工招募提案，招募了特定員工，並獲得後者智財權的非獨家技術授權。
蘋果描述Huxe開發的是建造個人化音訊內容的手機應用程式。
根據9to5Mac報導，它是NotebookLM專案主管及成員包括Raiza Martin、Jason Spielman和Stephen Hughes於2024年底成立，募得460萬美元。Huxe的技術於2025年9月正式公開下載，但卻在今年5月於網站公告將「前進到新目標」而將停止開發產品，並將App從App Store及Google Play商店下架。
Huxe App和NotebookLM的Audio Overview類似，可根據使用者上傳的檔案內容製作成podcast，還能根據郵件、行事曆、個人興趣等以AI生成個人化聲音簡報，由AI主持人講述。用戶可打斷AI主持人詢問問題或要求不同的解釋。
Google的NotebookLM源自Google Project Tailwind，於2023年7月推出後大受歡迎，今年7月改名為Gemini Notebook，並整合進Gemini App及Google搜尋。
蘋果並未說明延攬Huxe團隊的用意，不過顯然可強化Apple Intelligence的AI功能。蘋果今年3月也以類似的人才併購（acqui-hire）方式取得新創公司MotionVFX人才及技術授權，MotionVFX的產品可提供其他影像編輯程式添加視覺特效。
#Apple#Huxe#NotebookLM#Gemini Notebook#Spotify#European Commission