Amazon has entered into an asset purchase agreement with intellectual property and media platform developer Xperi to acquire its Perceive Corporation, which offers hardware- and software-based edge inference solutions.
The asset purchase agreement was disclosed in a regulatory filing last Friday. Nearly four dozen Xperi employees who are focused on Perceive will move to Amazon as part of the deal.
“Since Perceive’s inception, the landscape for edge inference technology has evolved, and Perceive, through the skill of its leaders and engineers, has adapted to this rapidly changing environment,” Jon Kirchner, the CEO of Xperi, said in a statement. “We are pleased to have found a suitable home for Perceive, its employees, and its technology. We are excited that Amazon will be able to take the technology to the next level, which we believe has significant potential.”
Perceive bills itself as an inference-based solution that allows low-power devices to deliver cutting-edge solutions. Products that benefit from Perceive‘s technology and development include security cameras, wearable devices and enterprise-level conferencing systems, some of which use an AI-powered processor called Ergo that was fully developed by the firm.
The deal could be a huge benefit to Amazon as the company continues to develop its own line-up of smart home technology, including Ring cameras and Fire TV streaming hardware, as the tech firm looks to integrate more AI features into its current and future products.
“We’re excited to have signed a deal to acquire Perceive and bring over its talented team to join our efforts to bring large language models and multi-modal experiences to devices capable of running on the edge,” a spokesperson for Amazon said in a statement over the weekend.
The deal is still subject to regulatory approval and certain closing conditions.
