Apple Discloses Deal to Hire Huxe Team and License Its Technology
A filing with the European Commission shows Apple agreed to make offers to certain Huxe employees and take a non-exclusive license to the startup's IP.
Photo: Daniel L. Lu (user:dllu) / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Apple has agreed to hire members of the team behind Huxe, a personalized audio startup, and to license its technology, according to a regulatory filing reported by TechCrunch on October 10. MacRumors first reported the deal on October 9.
What the filing says
Apple notified the European Commission of the arrangement on June 9. In it, Apple said it would make employment offers to "certain employees of Huxe AI" and receive a non-exclusive license to Huxe's intellectual property rights. TechCrunch describes the structure as a "reverse acqui-hire," in which a company takes on staff and technology without buying the startup outright.
The filing does not say which employees received offers, whether they accepted, or what Apple plans to do with the technology. No deal value was disclosed.
About Huxe
Huxe built a personalized audio product. Its founders had previously worked on the AI-generated podcast features in Google's NotebookLM, which TechCrunch says Google has since renamed Gemini Notebook.
Huxe announced on May 21 that it was shutting down. It said it would remove its app from the Apple and Google app stores, halt service and delete user data, and that the team was moving on to new projects.
Context
The shutdown came shortly after Spotify unveiled its own AI-powered podcast generation features. TechCrunch suggests Apple may want comparable functionality for its Podcasts app, but that is the outlet's speculation, and Apple has not commented on its plans in the material reported.
The filing was made roughly two weeks after Huxe's shutdown notice, and became public months later through the disclosure.
