Apple CEO Tim Cook holds a adjacent procreation iPhone 17 during an Apple peculiar lawsuit astatine Apple office connected Sept. 9, 2025 successful Cupertino, California.
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Apple is successful late-stage talks to get apical endowment from machine imaginativeness startup Prompt AI, arsenic good arsenic the company's technology, CNBC has learned.
Leadership astatine Prompt told employees of the pending transaction astatine an all-hands gathering connected Thursday and said that those who don't extremity up joining Apple volition beryllium paid a reduced salary, and encouraged to use for unfastened roles astatine the company, according to audio that was accessed by CNBC.
The 11-person institution was approached by different imaginable suitors, including Elon Musk's xAI and Neuralink, executives said successful the meeting.
Prompt was founded successful 2023 and raised a $5 cardinal effect circular that twelvemonth led by AIX and Abstract Ventures. Co-founders see CEO Tete Xiao, a notable AI researcher with a Phd successful machine subject from UC Berkeley, and President Trevor Darrell who was a laminitis of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) lab.
Xiao and Darrell didn't respond to requests for comment, nor did Apple. Neither xAI nor Neuralink instantly responded to a petition for comment.
Investors volition get paid immoderate wealth successful the woody but "won't beryllium made whole," executives said successful the meeting. Prompt employees were asked to refrain from mentioning Apple until further announcement portion searching for different jobs oregon updating friends and household connected their situation.
Prompt's flagship app, Seemour, connects to location information cameras, adding blase capabilities. The exertion helps cameras observe circumstantial people, pets and different animals oregon objects astir a household, and to nonstop alerts and text-based descriptions of antithetic enactment oregon reply questions astir what's been happening successful beforehand of the camera.
Xiao told employees astatine the gathering that portion Prompt AI's exertion and the Seemour app were moving well, the concern exemplary wasn't. The institution is retiring the Seemour app, and plans to pass users their information volition beryllium deleted and privateness protected, executives said.
Silicon Valley's tech giants person been snapping up apical AI endowment done acquihires, successful portion to bolster their AI probe and improvement successful a mode that helps them skirt regulatory concerns. Apple's woody for Prompt is overmuch smaller than caller high-profile transactions, specified arsenic Meta's $14.3 cardinal investment successful Scale AI that brought with it the company's laminitis and different execs, and Google's $2.4 cardinal deal for Windsurf's CEO and leaders that included licensing fees.
Apple has historically avoided making ample acquisitions. In the half-century since its founding, Apple's biggest acquisition was the $3 cardinal deal for Beats Electronics successful 2014. The institution prefers to softly get smaller teams and usage their endowment and exertion to make features for its merchandise lines.
Some analysts person attributed Apple's comparatively dilatory advancement successful AI to its unwillingness to marque large purchases. Its banal is down 2% this year, severely trailing large indexes and the worst show among the tech megcaps.
While Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker's foray into generative AI, has underwhelmed critics and faced delays, the institution achieved method occurrence with machine vision, particularly successful its mixed world headset, Vision Pro. The iPhone besides has the quality to decipher what objects, radical oregon pets are successful photographs taken by users.
Prompt's exertion and endowment are apt to beryllium portion of Apple's HomeKit astute location division.
— CNBC's Kif Leswing contributed to this report.
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