Apple Wanted to Buy Halide to Boost iPhone 18 Pro's Camera App—Now There's a Lawsuit

Apple's plans to heighten the iPhone 18 Pro's Camera app led it to see acquiring Halide, but the talks yet collapsed and were followed by a fierce ineligible quality betwixt the startup's co-founders, according to The Information reports.


In the summertime of 2025, Apple reportedly held discussions to get Lux Optics, the developer down the fashionable iPhone camera apps Halide, Kino, and Spectre. The institution concluded that it could get a amended connection from Apple successful the aboriginal pursuing updates to the app. Two months aft the talks concluded without a deal, Apple acceptable astir recruiting Lux's co-founder and decorator Sebastian de With.

Lux CEO and co-founder Ben Sandofsky is said to person fired de With successful December implicit fiscal misconduct. de With announced that helium had joined Apple's plan team successful January.

Sandofsky has present filed a suit successful the California Superior Court of Santa Cruz against de With, accusing him of improperly utilizing much than $150,000 successful Lux institution funds to wage for idiosyncratic expenses since 2022, arsenic good arsenic providing confidential worldly and root codification from Lux to Apple.

During the discussions to get Lux, Apple employees purportedly told the startup that its intelligence spot was a large information successful evaluating the company. Apple seemingly wanted to get Lux to bolster the built-in Camera app, which is said to beryllium "top precedence for the institution close now." The ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ volition "match professional-grade cameras successful presumption of definite precocious features," necessitating an upgrade of the built-in Camera app. Apple is not named arsenic a suspect successful the lawsuit and it is not accused of immoderate wrongdoing.

de With's ineligible representatives accidental that the suit is meritless and contradict that helium "used, transferred, oregon disclosed immoderate Lux intelligence property" arsenic portion of his caller occupation astatine Apple. They added that the suit was lone filed aft de With raised concerns with Sandofsky astir fiscal irregularities astatine Lux and had requested entree to its fiscal records and payments, suggesting that it was a "retaliatory effect to those efforts and an effort to debar scrutiny of that conduct."
This article, "Apple Wanted to Buy Halide to Boost iPhone 18 Pro's Camera App—Now There's a Lawsuit" archetypal appeared connected MacRumors.com

Discuss this article successful our forums