Apple has signed a deal with Huxe, an AI podcast startup, that lets it hire employees from the company and license its technology. It is not an acquisition. Huxe had already shut down its app by the time Apple told regulators about the arrangement.
The deal appears in a European Commission filing under the Digital Markets Act, as reported by MacRumors. Apple rarely announces startup deals itself, which makes these filings one of the few ways they surface, as with Apple’s Sonera acquisition in September. Apple notified the Commission on June 9.
Apple Gets Hiring Rights and a Non-Exclusive License to Huxe’s Technology
The filing says Apple will have the right to make employment offers to certain Huxe employees. Apple also receives a non-exclusive license to the company’s intellectual property, which means it does not get exclusive rights to the technology. In principle, Huxe’s technology could be licensed to others as well.
Unlike Apple’s PlasmaSolve deal in August, which covered the company’s entire share capital, the Huxe agreement only covers hiring rights and a license. Huxe itself is not part of what Apple is taking on.
Huxe announced in May that it was winding down. The team said it was moving on and that development would stop. The audio service ended on May 28, and Apple’s notice to the Commission followed on June 9, less than two weeks later.
Huxe Was Founded by Former Google NotebookLM Team Members
Huxe was started by Raiza Martin, Jason Spielman, and Stephen Hughes, who came from the team behind Google’s NotebookLM. The tool has since been renamed Gemini Notebook. It is Google’s AI research tool, best known for turning documents and other source material into podcast-style audio discussions.
Huxe took a similar approach and aimed it at personalized listening. Its app generated audio briefings from a user’s emails, calendar, and interests, and it produced podcasts about topics people wanted to explore. Listeners could interrupt the AI hosts to ask a question or request a different explanation.
Apple has looked at bigger AI deals before. It weighed acquisitions of Mistral AI and Perplexity but held back. A hiring and licensing agreement with a startup that has already closed its product is a much smaller step than either of those would have been.
The filing does not say which Huxe employees Apple could recruit, and it does not confirm that anyone has been hired.
