Earlier this month, we released a (relatively) unusual news about Apple’s acquisition of a patent cluster. As you may know, the Cupertino giant does not have much affinity with the bureaucracy surrounding intellectual property and it is more common to see it acquiring companies instead of patents.
Although you have not purchased the Lighthouse AI, a company specializing in residential security cameras, Apple did more than just acquire its patents: it also grabbed a portion of the team, including its co-founders, as reported by The Information.
More precisely, about 20 employees of the company went to Cupertino, where they will continue to work with some projects that started to be developed at Lighthouse. As we said, the company announced the end of its activities last year, claiming “it has not achieved the commercial success it was looking for”.
First of all, Lighthouse was collecting camera data to improve its machine learning and offer facial recognition features similar to those acquired by Apple with patents.
The team is expected to continue working on this project at Apple, although it is unclear how Apple plans to use Lighthouse technology in the future, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple hires ex-Microsoft
Last month, Apple hired ex-Microsoft (and CEO of the extinct smart lock brand Otto) Sam Jadallah, to lead its smart home products division. The executive confirmed the new venture on his LinkedIn page.

According to the CNBC, the hiring of Jadallah is the latest sign that Apple plans to leverage its efforts and share in the home device market, dominated by Alphabet and Amazon.
After more than a decade as corporate vice president at Microsoft, Jadallah founded Otto in 2013, a company that developed smart locks – some costing up to $ 700! The company, however, did not live long and closed its doors after four years in 2017 – shortly after one of its latest products was launched.
Even before its activities were closed, Otto already had a certain connection with Apple. According to the executive, about 70% of the initial members of the company came from Apple, and, after the launch of the first products, it became known in the market as “the Apple of smart locks”.
Hiring Jadallah hasn’t been Apple’s only move in that area recently; last February, we reported that the company had acquired Pullstring, a startup specializes in voice applications that can help the Cupertino giant reach our horizons in this market.
via MacRumors, Business Insider