Apple acquires Irish voice recognition startup Voysis

Apple has reportedly acquired Voysis, an Irish start-up that has developed an intelligent speech recognition platform. Apple is also said to be in the process of acquiring NextVR, a platform for streaming video in VR.

According to Bloomberg, Apple has acquired Irish company Voysis. The start-up’s website is offline and Apple says in a general statement that it sometimes takes over small companies and does not communicate substantively about it. Supposedly, Apple is acquiring the company to improve its Siri voice assistant.

Voysis specialized in recognizing speech in a natural way. The start-up made technology for digital assistants in apps from stores. On its own site, Voysis described an example where people say they need a new TV followed by ‘my budget is a thousand dollars’. Voysis’ AI model aims to properly interpret such ‘natural speech’.

Voysis, founded in 2012, claims to use Wavenets, a method developed by Google’s DeepMind in 2016. A founder of Voysis said in 2018 that the company’s trained AI model requires 25MB of storage space. This makes it easy to use the software offline on, for example, a smartphone.

Apple is also said to be in the process of making another acquisition. According to 9to5mac, the iPhone maker wants to incorporate NextVR. That company from California offers technology to broadcast events in VR. The company has partnerships with the NBA, Fox Sports, Wimbledon and other partners. NextVR also has patents for upscaling video streams for display in VR. The acquisition would cost $100 million. Apple and NextVR have not commented on the story, but employees are said to have already been told they may have to move.

Apple regularly acquires small businesses without disclosing details. CEO Tim Cook said last year that Apple had acquired 20 to 25 companies in six months. That equates to almost one acquisition per week. On average, Apple takes over a company every two to three weeks, Cook said.