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 application Snapchat, has acquired a British artificial intelligence start-up called Ariel AI, which focuses on augmented reality.
Ariel AI was founded in London in 2018 by a group of former Google and Facebook researchers, including CEO Iasonas Kokkinos and technology director George Papandreou. The news was first reported by Business Insider and confirmed on Tuesday to CNBC by Snap.
Prior to the acquisition of Snap, Ariel AI raised $ 1.1 million in investor funding, according to Crunchbase. Snap declined to comment on the price of the new offer, but it’s probably in the millions in a single figure.
Artificial intelligence can be defined as machine-demonstrated intelligence, while augmented reality is a technology that involves superimposing digital content and information on the physical world.
Ariel AI 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 human 3D perception” in real time and can be used to feed “the next generation of consumer experiences on mobile devices”.
A demo video from YouTube shows how the company’s technology can render a 3D model of a person in real time. The model can then be used for virtual clothing trials and addictive games.
Snap told CNBC that the Ariel AI team joined its London computer vision team in late 2020.
The startup’s 12 engineers were tasked with making the Snapchat camera “smarter” and enhancing augmented reality experiences that allow Snapchat users to engage in the real world.
Snap said their work will focus on understanding geometry, semantics and more of what is in the visual field of the camera.
Nathan Benaich, an AI investor at Air Street Capital and co-author of the annual State of AI report, told CNBC that he was not surprised that Snap bought Ariel AI.
“That was actually my bet,” he said, adding that Facebook, Samsung and maker Pokemon Go Niantic were other competitors for him.
Benaich said he believes Snap bought Ariel because it is “focused on building 3D networks on the device, in a fast and battery-efficient way, with a use case in RA.”
He also said that Snap probably bought the company for the talent it has in its workforce.
Social media companies like TikTok and Facebook are struggling to develop the most sophisticated AR experiences for their users. These range from dog ears that people can overlap to other special effects.
US technology companies have acquired several British AI companies in recent years. The best-known example is Google, which bought DeepMind for $ 600 million in 2014. Elsewhere, Twitter bought Magic Pony Technology for $ 150 million, while Facebook bought Bloomsbury AI in a deal worthwhile. up to $ 30 million.
Snap also bought a start-up called Voisey in November last year, which developed an app that allows people to overlay their own voice on short pieces of music.