Apple’s Next AI Move May Bring Smarter Eyes to Your Home
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Apple is reportedly close to a deal to acquire the “talent and technology” of computer vision startup Prompt AI.
According to CNBC, the deal is all but signed; Prompt AI’s leaders held an all-hands meeting on Thursday to brief employees on the agreement and outline the next steps:
Leadership at Prompt told employees of the pending transaction at an all-hands meeting on Thursday and said that those who don’t end up joining Apple will be paid a reduced salary, and encouraged to apply for open roles at the company, according to audio that was accessed by CNBC.
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Investors will get paid some money in the deal but “won’t be made whole,” executives said in the meeting. Prompt employees were asked to refrain from mentioning Apple until further notice while searching for other jobs or updating friends and family on their situation.”
While details remain under wraps, the meeting made clear that Prompt’s technology and much of its staff will soon be under Apple’s umbrella.
Prompt’s flagship product, Seemour, uses AI with security cameras to “detect specific people, pets, and objects around a household, sending alerts and text-based descriptions of unusual activity — or even answering questions about what’s happening in front of the camera,” CNBC noted. Its advanced neural architecture can process tens of millions of pixels in fractions of a second, enabling reliable recognition of family members and pets while continuously improving accuracy through on-device learning.
CNBC says the Seemour app will be removed from the App Store (and it appears that the removal has already taken place), and that users will be told that “their data will be deleted and privacy protected.”
While Apple more typically acquires entire companies, “acqui-hires” like this have become increasingly common among tech giants in the AI space, as it allows them to bring in talent and technology without the closer regulatory scrutiny that a full acquisition might invite from the Federal Trade Commission.
The final details of the Apple/Prompt deal have not yet been announced, so we don’t know for certain how much Apple will be paying to acquire Prompt’s staff and technology. However, once the deal goes through, details of the agreement should emerge.
Apple isn’t alone in this approach. Microsoft paid about $650 million last year to license technology from Inflection AI while hiring most of its staff, including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. Google followed by acquiring Character.AI in 2024 and Windsurf in 2025. Meta invested in Scale AI and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, along with key members of his team, while Amazon made a similar move for technology from Adept.
The deal could be good news for Prompt employees who will make the move, as the firm has been struggling with establishing a sustainable business model. The company had recently been courted by both xAI and Neuralink, two firms controlled by Elon Musk.
