Apple revealed in a regulatory filing that it has reached an agreement to bring on team members and technology from personalized audio startup Huxe, in what's commonly known as a reverse acqui-hire deal. As first reported in MacRumors, Apple disclosed to the European Commission that it has agreed to make employment offers to 'certain employees of Huxe AI,' and to 'receive a non-exclusive license to Huxe's intellectual property rights.' Reverse acqui-hires emerged in recent years as a way for larger companies to hire key team members and license technology from startups without acquiring the startups outright ' presumably allowing them to build up AI talent and tech without drawing as much antitrust scrutiny. (Confusingly, these deals have both been referred to as 'reverse acqui-hires' and as plain old 'acqui-hires.') In the case of Huxe, the startup was founded by developers who'd previously worked on the AI-generated podcast features in NotebookLM (recently renamed Gemini...
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