Apple has struck an acqui-hire deal with Huxe, an AI audio app started by three people who helped build Google's NotebookLM. The arrangement became public on October 9, 2026, when 9to5Mac spotted it on the European Commission's transparency list of deals notified under the Digital Markets Act.
Apple is not buying the company outright. Under the deal it may make job offers to, and hire, certain Huxe employees, and it receives a non-exclusive licence to Huxe's intellectual property. The DMA entry is dated June 9, 2026, meaning Apple informed the EU in June. No price or other terms were disclosed.
By then Huxe's product no longer existed. The startup pulled its app from the App Store and Google Play in May 2026 and shut the service down on May 28.
What Huxe built
Huxe was an audio-first assistant. It read a user's email and calendar to produce a spoken daily briefing, generated AI-hosted podcast-style episodes on topics a user asked about, and let people set up live stations that delivered running updates on subjects such as tech news or sports.
Like NotebookLM, Huxe could generate a podcast-style conversation between multiple AI hosts. Chief executive Raiza Martin told TechCrunch the team had noticed during testing that people liked being able to generate audio on different topics, and pitched the app at people who spend the whole day in front of screens.
The app launched on an invite-only basis in June 2025 and opened to everyone on iOS and Android that September.
“This is a well-suited product for people who spend all day on their screens with tons of tabs open on their browser.”
The founders and the funding
Martin led the NotebookLM project at Google. She left in December 2024 together with designer Jason Spielman and engineer Stephen Hughes, who had both worked on NotebookLM since its start, to found Huxe.
In September 2025 the company announced $4.6 million in funding from Conviction, Genius Ventures, Figma chief executive Dylan Field and Google Research chief scientist Jeff Dean. No later round was reported.
Why Huxe shut down
Huxe announced its wind-down on May 21–22, 2026, saying only that the team was moving on to new things and would not continue developing the product. Existing users had about a week of access before their data was deleted.
The company did not give a reason. Coverage at the time noted that the announcement came a day after Spotify launched a feature that generates personalised podcasts from a prompt, and that Adobe, Amazon, ElevenLabs, Meta and Google had all shipped similar AI audio tools after NotebookLM made the format popular. Benzatine and others argued that this made it hard for a small app to stand out or build a large base of paying users.
Apple's notification to the EU, dated June 9, came less than two weeks after the service was switched off. Neither side has said when the hiring arrangement was agreed.
Apple's quiet AI hiring
Under the Digital Markets Act, designated gatekeepers such as Apple must tell the European Commission about planned acquisitions in the digital sector. The resulting public register is broader than most merger databases: as the research group SOMO has noted, it also captures talent hires, IP licensing and purchases of individual assets, which is how small deals like this one become visible.
Huxe is at least the fourth AI-related deal by Apple to surface through the DMA register in 2026, according to 9to5Mac. Many of them follow the same pattern: a right to hire selected staff and a non-exclusive licence to the technology, rather than a full takeover.
In May 2026, for example, the register revealed a deal with Animato, a California company that makes avatar software for video chats and AI tutoring, under which Apple gained hiring rights, a non-exclusive IP licence and patent applications, IPFray reported. That publication listed earlier transactions with PromptAI, WhyLabs, Mayday Labs and TrueMeeting as using similar structures.
Apple did not say how many people it hired from Huxe or what they will work on.
