Apple acquired Q.ai, reportedly for $1.6 billion, a startup working on converting “silent speech” into text. The technology could be crucial for AR glasses.
If the $1.6 billion value widely reported by mainstream news outlets such as Reuters is accurate, it would represent Apple’s second largest acquisition to date, behind only Beats.
Since its founding in 2022, Q.ai has operated in “stealth mode”, staying very secretive about exactly what it’s working on. But the background of its three co-founders, as well as details in a patent filing, provide strong hints as to what the technology is.
Aviad Maizels, the CEO, previously founded PrimeSense, the company that Apple acquired in 2013 to build Face ID. PrimeSense also licensed some of its technology to Microsoft for the original Kinect. Dr. Yonatan Wexler, the CTO, is a world-class computer vision expert who was the VP of R&D at OrCam, a company which miniaturized high-end computer vision into a tiny device that clips onto eyeglasses.
Alterego’s ‘Silent Speech’ Could Be The Answer To Dictating Text In Public
Alterego is a wearable device that promises to let you silently dictate text by sensing the subvocal movements of your speech muscles.
The idea of “silent speech” is to let you silently dictate text by sensing the subvocal movements of your speech muscles. You could therefore send a sensitive message while in public, completely privately, or direct an AI assistant without other people around you knowing.
The fundamental idea is not new, and another startup, Alterego, is working on a hardware-based approach that uses sensors attached to your jaw.
What makes Q.ai’s approach special, if its patents are any indication, is that it’s a computer vision approach, using cameras pointed at your jaw instead of attached to it.
For example, the patent Detection of silent speech refers to a “optical sensing head” located “in proximity to a face of the user” that “senses light reflected from the face and to output a signal in response to the detected light”.
Apple Smart Glasses Reportedly Set To Launch In Late 2026
Apple plans to launch its competitor to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses in late 2026, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.
Apple could potentially integrate Q.ai’s technology into future Apple Vision headsets, AirPods stems, and the smart glasses that Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claim the company is working on.
Meta, meanwhile, is betting on letting you scribble letters on a surface such as your leg, sensing it with an sEMG band worn on your wrist.
What’s clear already is that regardless of which technology wins out, the ability to enter text privately while wearing smart glasses in public will be crucial if the form factor ever hopes to supplant the smartphone.
