Apple said on Thursday that it has acquired q.ai, an Israeli startup that develops machine learning technologies for audio and speech recognition. The deal, valued at nearly $2 billion, ranks as Apple’s second-largest acquisition to date, after the $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics in 2014.
Little is known about q.ai to the broader public. The company operated mostly in stealth mode with a minimal landing page that reveals nothing about its actual operations. Instead, the site contains only a single, borderline buzzwordy tagline: “In a world full of noise, we craft a new kind of quiet.”
q.ai reportedly develops silent speech recognition technology. It analyzes facial skin micromovements to interpret whispered speech and detect biometric indicators like heart rate. The company holds multiple patents regarding optical sensors for non-verbal communication.
The startup is backed by a respectable number of venture capital firms, including Matter Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, Exor, and GV (formerly Google Ventures).
According to Reuters, q.ai’s 100 employees, including CEO Aviad Maizels and co-founders Yonatan Wexler and Avi Barliya, will be joining Apple once the deal finalizes.
Apple hasn’t specified what it intends to do with q.ai’s tech. The type of technology implies that they could integrate it with wearable devices like headphones or AR/VR headsets, possibly improve Face ID, or even enhance Siri to achieve more natural interactions.
Apple has faced criticism for lagging behind in the AI race compared to its main competitors like Microsoft and Google. Acquiring technology from an AI startup should help Cupertino close the competitive gap, but only to some extent.
As Apple pledged to invest over $500 billion in US infrastructure and AI over the coming years, acquiring q.ai should represent only a small portion of that plan.
For context, Apple paid more than half the value of the q.ai deal in regulatory fines during 2025 alone.