Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during the company’s IPO on Thursday, March 2, 2017.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON – Snap, the parent company of social media app 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 Chief Executive Iasonas Kokkinos and Chief Technology Officer George Papandreou. The news was first reported by Business Insider and confirmed to CNBC by Snap on Tuesday.
Prior to the Snap acquisition, Ariel AI had raised $ 1.1 million in funding from investors, according to Crunchbase. Snap declined to comment on the price of the new deal, but it’s likely in the single-digit millions.
Artificial intelligence can be defined as intelligence demonstrated by machines, while augmented reality is a technology that overlays digital content and information over the physical world.
Ariel AI has focused on an area of AI known as computer vision, which is used to build augmented reality functions.
The start-up’s website says its software enables “3D human perception” in real time and can be used to enable “the next generation of consumer experiences on mobile devices.”
A YouTube demo video 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 trying on clothes and immersive gaming.
Snap told CNBC that Ariel AI’s team joined the computer vision team in London in late 2020.
The start-up’s 12 engineers have been tasked with making the Snapchat camera “smarter” and improving the augmented reality experiences that allow Snapchat users to connect with the real world.
Snap said their work will focus on understanding geometry, semantics, and more of what’s in the camera’s field of view.
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 bought Ariel AI.
“That was actually my bet,” he said, adding that Facebook, Samsung and Pokemon Go maker Niantic were other contenders for him.
Benaich said he thinks Snap bought Ariel because it “focuses on 3D mesh building on the device in a snappy and battery-efficient way with a use case in AR.”
He also said that Snap probably also bought the company because of the talent it has in its workforce.
Social media companies such as TikTok and Facebook compete for the most advanced AR experiences for their users. These range from dog ears that people can put over their heads to other special effects.
American tech companies have acquired several British AI startups in recent years. The best known example is that Google bought DeepMind for a reported $ 600 million in 2014. Elsewhere, Twitter bought Magic Pony Technology for $ 150 million, while Facebook bought Bloomsbury AI for a deal worth up to $ 30 million.
Snap also bought a start-up called Voisey last November, which developed an app that allows people to put their own voice on short music tracks.