Apple hires Huxe staff and licenses its audio app technology

Apple agreed to hire certain employees of Huxe AI, Inc. and take a non-exclusive licence to the startup's intellectual property, according to a filing in the European Union's Digital Markets Act transparency database dated 9 June 2026. The filing, disclosed on 9 October 2026, makes this at least the fourth AI-related deal Apple has announced this year. The agreement does not purchase the company itself.heise.de

The deal matters because it is an acqui-hire: Apple gains access to key people and some technology without buying the business or triggering a full merger review. Huxe built a mobile application that creates personalised audio content, generating daily briefings from a user's email and calendar, podcast-style conversations on chosen topics, and continuously updated feeds on subjects such as news and sports.

What the EU filing discloses

The filing states that Apple will have the right to make employment offers to and hire certain employees of Huxe AI, Inc. and receive a non-exclusive licence to its intellectual property rights. It describes Huxe as providing a mobile application that creates personalised audio content. Neither the price nor the identities of the employees Apple intends to hire have been disclosed.

Huxe was founded in late 2024 by three former Google developers who worked on NotebookLM: product manager Raiza Martin, designer Jason Spielman and engineer Stephen Hughes. Martin left Google as NotebookLM's project lead in December 2024 as the product grew in popularity. NotebookLM, now renamed Gemini Notebook, began as an experimental tool for answering questions and summarising a user's own documents.appleosophy.com+1

The team formally launched Huxe on an invite-only basis in June 2025 and opened it to everyone that September alongside a $4.6 million funding round. The app let users interrupt the AI podcast speakers and ask questions, a feature also present in NotebookLM. Huxe continued developing the product until May 2026, when the founders announced the company was shutting down.

Huxe launched in 2025 and shut in May 2026

Huxe's service ended on 28 May 2026. At the time, the company's website said only that the team was 'moving on to new things.' Heise reported that the founders' initial funding proved insufficient and that the personalised podcast approach did not take hold in the market. A thank-you message to former users is now the only page remaining on the site.

Apple informed the European Commission of the deal last June, and the transaction appeared on the bloc's Digital Markets Act transparency website on 9 October 2026. The database lists gatekeepers such as Apple and regularly publishes their acquisitions. Heise reported that Martin, Spielman and Hughes all still list Huxe as their current employer on LinkedIn.

Acqui-hires have drawn criticism for potentially letting large technology companies bypass traditional merger review. Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson said earlier this year that the agency was beginning to examine such arrangements closely. In March, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department formally began considering changes to premerger reporting rules that could address acqui-hires, reverse acqui-hires, and deals involving non-exclusive IP licences.