Apple disclosed in a European Commission filing that it has agreed to hire certain employees of podcast startup Huxe and take a non-exclusive license to its technology, TechCrunch reported Oct. 10.
The filing does not name which Huxe employees were offered jobs or confirm any have accepted, and no dollar figures were disclosed, according to TechCrunch and MacRumors. The European Commission received notice of the arrangement on June 9.
Huxe was founded by former Google NotebookLM team members Raiza Martin, Jason Spielman and Stephen Hughes, and built an app that generated personalized audio briefings and podcasts from users' emails, calendars and interests, with AI hosts listeners could interrupt with questions, MacRumors reported. The startup shut down in May.
The arrangement, sometimes called a reverse acquihire, lets a larger company absorb a startup's people and technology while avoiding the antitrust review and public price tag that come with a full acquisition. It surfaced only because regulators require the filing, not because either company announced it.
A deal that closed in June became public in October purely through a regulatory database. Founders weighing an acquihire exit should notice that the terms, not just the headline, are what end up on record.