Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., is on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during the company’s initial public offering on Thursday, March 2, 2017.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON – Snap, the parent company of the social networking app Snapchat, has acquired a British artificial intelligence start-up called Ariel AI that focuses on augmented reality.
Ariel AI was founded in London in 2018 by a group of former Google and Facebook researchers, including chief executive Iasonas Kokkinos and chief technology officer George Papandreou. Business Insider first reported the news and Snap confirmed it on CNBC on Tuesday.
Prior to the Snap acquisition, Ariel AI had raised $ 1.1 million in investor funding, according to Crunchbase. Snap declined to comment on the price of the new deal, but it’s likely to be in single-digit millions.
Artificial intelligence can be defined as the intelligence demonstrated by machines, while augmented reality is a technology that involves superimposing digital content and information on the physical world.
Ariel AI has focused on an area of AI known as computer vision, which is used to build augmented reality features.
The start-up’s website says its software enables real-time “3D human perception” and can be used to feed “the next generation of consumer experiences on mobile devices”.
A YouTube demo video shows how the company’s technology can represent a 3D model of a person in real time. The model can be used to test virtual clothes and immersive games.
Snap told CNBC that Ariel AI’s team joined its computer vision team in London in late 2020.
The 12 engineers at the start-up have been tasked with making the Snapchat camera “smarter” and enhancing augmented reality experiences that allow Snapchat users to interact with the real world.
Snap said his work will focus on understanding geometry, semantics and much more than is in the field of view of the camera.
Nathan Benaich, an AI investor at Air Street Capital and co-author of the annual State of AI report, told CNBC he wasn’t surprised Snap had bought Ariel AI.
“That was my bet,” he said, adding that Facebook, Samsung and the maker of Pokemon Go Niantic were other candidates for him.
Benaich said he believes Snap bought Ariel because it is “focused on building 3D mesh on the device in a fast and efficient way from the battery with a use case in RA.”
He also said Snap probably also bought the company because of the talent it has in its staff.
Social media companies like TikTok and Facebook are struggling to develop more sophisticated RA experiences for their users. These range from dog ears that people can superimpose on the head to other special effects.
American technology companies have acquired several British AI companies in recent years. The best known example is that Google bought DeepMind for $ 600 million reported in 2014. Elsewhere, Twitter bought Magic Pony Technology for $ 150 million, while Facebook bought Bloomsbury AI on a deal of up to $ 30 million. million dollars.
Snap also bought a start-up called Voisey last November, which developed an app that allows people to overlay their own voice on short music tracks.