Apple acquires facial expression, detection specialist, co-founder linked to Face ID

Apple has splashed out on an Israeli start-up that specializes in understanding “silent speech.”

The iPhone maker has made one of its biggest ever acquisitions, acquiring Q.AI in a deal valued at nearly $2 billion, reports the Financial Times.

The Israeli company filed a patent in 2025 to understand “facial skin micromovements.” In effect, these facial expressions could be translated to enable users to communicate non-verbally.

Wearables and AI assistants are fast-growing technologies and the acquisition is seen as a way for Apple to close the gap with Google, Meta and OpenAI in the battle for the next generation of wearable devices.

Q.AI’s technology could be deployed in glasses or headphones, for example, so that wearers could have private, non-verbal communication with AI assistants. Apple’s SVP of hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, commented that Q.AI is a “remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning.”

While rivals such as Microsoft, Google and Meta are known to make large acquisitions, Apple has a history of quieter, smaller purchases. Its biggest splash was the $3 billion acquisition of Beats in 2014. A more recent buy-out was the $1 billion deal for Intel’s smartphone modem business in 2019.

The Q.AI deal is notable in other ways. The start-up was founded in Tel Aviv in 2022 by Avi Barliya, Yonatan Wexler, and Aviad Maizels — who shares history with the Cupertino giant.

Maizels was president and co-founder of PrimeSense, a start-up that was acquired by Apple in 2013 for $360 million. PrimeSense was known for providing the hardware design and chip used in Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system for the Xbox 360.

PrimeSense developed “light coding” technology that enabled depth acquisition, coding scenes with near-IR light. This was paired with an off-the-shelf standard CMOS image sensor to read the coded light from which algorithms could extract 3D data. The technology was a foundation for Apple’s Face ID, one of the world’s most ubiquitous face biometric systems.

PrimeSense CTO and co-founder Alexander Shpunt is now a leader at Lyte, a start-up founded in 2021, which is developing a “visual brain” for robots, enabling them to see motion and depth.

Article Topics

acquisitions  |  Apple  |  expression recognition  |  face detection  |  Face ID  |  Q.AI  |  startup