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Apple Taps Virtual Avatar Firm Animato's Expertise and Intellectual Property

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Apple has quietly agreed to hire employees and license intellectual property of Animato, a small California-based company that has developed software for creating virtual avatars used in video chats and tutoring, according to a European Commission filing spotted by MacRumors.

animato-studio.jpg

The acquisition was filed under the EU's Digital Markets Act in January 2026, and appears to be what's known as a "structured acqui-hire." In other words, Apple is able to make employment offers to certain Animato employees and receive a non-exclusive license to the company's intellectual property, as well as acquire its patent applications.
Apple Inc. ("Apple") will have the right to make employment offers to and hire certain employees of Animato, Inc. ("Animato"), receive a non-exclusive license to Animato's intellectual property rights, and acquire Animato's patent applications. Animato develops and distributes software that creates virtual avatars for video chats and tutoring.
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Animato was founded in October 2022 by Francesco Rossi, who previously spent seven years at Apple before leaving to start the company.

Animato is best known for a free app called "Call Annie," which launched in April 2023, and gave ChatGPT a real-time animated avatar face, allowing users to have video-style conversations with the AI chatbot.

The app later moved into language learning by offering avatar tutors for practicing English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean through video conversations.

Animato also came out with a macOS virtual camera app called Animato Studio that let users make themselves appear as fantasy figures and anime avatars during video calls and live streams.

Both App Store listings have since been removed following the acquisition, and the Call Annie website says the app has been discontinued.

It's Apple's second acquisition of a digital avatar company in just over a year. In January 2025, Apple acquired technology, IP, and physical assets from TrueMeeting, a company specializing in the development of digital avatar technology for meetings.

Apple already offers avatar-style technology with Memoji on iPhone and its Personas feature on Apple Vision Pro, the latter of which generates a realistic digital representation of the user for FaceTime calls.

Article Link: Apple Taps Virtual Avatar Firm Animato's Expertise and Intellectual Property
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/19/apple-acquires-animato/
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Reactions: Z-4195
I thought the Facerig/Animaze people had patents on some of this early on, so I'm surprised to find there's actually been multiple competitors acqui-hired since then.
 
God…it’s all becoming “Lawnmower Man” now.
 

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Good to know. Apple could definitely use it to improve Memoji and personas but also waiting to see if Apple has other plans for it.
 
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Wait, I don't get it. So they're hiring the employees (but not all of them, though I guess some just want out of the business entirely or move on from it... maybe...), the app is discontinued, and Apple has the patents, but only has a non-exclusive license?
I guess I'm missing something, because I don't really understand how that works. With the license, who is offering the licence? Is the company that made the app still going to exist and Apple is just paying for the license continuously?
 
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Cowboy Prince Harry (with ethereal earrings?) looks full AI-slop, 10/10 on the ugly scale together with bad-CG man, Biden and Trump.
‘Realistic’ Asian woman and black dreads dude are high on the slop scale, 9/10.

White hair painterly woman looks cross-eyed but otherwise fine.
Dark hair painterly Asian woman looks fine too.

They may all look awful full-size and animated realistically. The painterly designs may be rip-offs of characters I’m not familiar with.
 
Apple, please spend some of this money and finally work on siri, add additional languages support for Siri and let her work in multi-language setup!
 
Junior117 said:
Wait, I don't get it. So they're hiring the employees (but not all of them, though I guess some just want out of the business entirely or move on from it... maybe...), the app is discontinued, and Apple has the patents, but only has a non-exclusive license?
I guess I'm missing something, because I don't really understand how that works. With the license, who is offering the licence? Is the company that made the app still going to exist and Apple is just paying for the license continuously?
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It’s all the rage now to “Hire-Aquire”. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are all doing it. It allows these big corps to get around certain FTC rules concerning buyouts and ownership. Similar to the once hot SPAC craze on Wall Street to skirt around certain SEC rules and regs concerning IPOs.
 
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Why does apple keep trying to turn us into bad cartoons?

Is it just the opposite approach (vs making ai more realistic) to making it so that we can’t tell the difference between humans and bots?

Or is it that it offloads the energy cost of streaming video calls from the data center (transmitting a full streaming video to the user) to the end user (who has to render the character out of a comparatively minuscule motion data set sent by the data center?
 
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I do not ever want to appear in video chats as someone else, and certainly a cartoon character or strange other avatar.

This stuff is so odd to me.

Truly, I do understand the point of Apple doing stuff like this.
 
Wx_Man said:
It’s all the rage now to “Hire-Aquire”. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are all doing it. It allows these big corps to get around certain FTC rules concerning buyouts and ownership. Similar to the once hot SPAC craze on Wall Street to skirt around certain SEC rules and regs concerning IPOs.
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I'm well aware of acqui-hiring. What's confusing to me is _this_ specific arrangement. Usually, when I hear about acqui-hiring, they get all of the employees, and then they buy the IP (or let it expire, I think). This feels more complicated, however. Deliberately complex? Sure. But I'm not arguing about that (or really much of anything). I'm just trying to understand. I suppose I'm not smart enough to get it, though. 😅
 
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