Breaking News: Apple Snaps up Startup Specializing in AI Video Compression Technology

Apple has acquired WaveOne, a startup that was developing AI algorithms for compressing video. While Apple has not confirmed the sale, former employees have indicated that they are now working within Apple’s various machine learning groups.

WaveOne’s founders set out to take the decades-old paradigm of video codecs and make them AI-powered. Their main innovation was a “content-aware” video compression and decompression algorithm that could run on AI accelerators built into many phones and PCs.

Leveraging AI-powered scene and object detection, the startup’s technology could essentially “understand” a video frame, allowing it to prioritize faces at the expense of other elements within a scene to save bandwidth.

WaveOne also claimed that its video compression tech was robust to sudden disruptions in connectivity. It could make a “best guess” based on whatever bits it had available, so when bandwidth was suddenly restricted, the video wouldn’t freeze; it’d just show less detail for the duration.

Investors saw the potential in WaveOne’s tech. Prior to the Apple acquisition, WaveOne attracted $9 million from backers including Khosla Ventures, Vela Partners, Incubate Fund, Omega Venture Partners and Blue Ivy.

With this acquisition, Apple could potentially make more efficient streaming possible. Even minor improvements in video compression could save on bandwidth costs, or enable services like Apple TV+ to deliver higher resolutions and framerates depending on the type of content being streamed.

It will be interesting to see what innovations the Apple-owned WaveOne team will bring to the table in the future. Will they be able to make significant improvements in video compression and streaming? Only time will tell.