Apple appears to have made another stealthy startup acquisition in Seattle.
We’re hearing that the tech giant is acquiring WhyLabs, a Seattle startup founded in 2019 that helps companies observe their AI apps to prevent security risks and optimize performance.
The deal hasn’t been announced publicly. Investors aren’t commenting. Apple and WhyLabs execs haven’t responded to our messages.
There are a few clues online.
- AI Fund, a Palo Alto venture capital firm that co-led WhyLabs’ Series A round in 2021, notes on its portfolio page that the company “was acquired in 2025.”
- Perry Wu, a former general partner at AI Fund, lists WhyLabs on his LinkedIn page as “ACQ BY APPLE.”
It would mark the latest Seattle acquisition for Apple, which has swooped up a group of Emerald City enterprise software startups.
The company previously paid $200 million in 2020 to acquire Xnor, a Seattle startup that specialized in edge-based AI tools.
Apple also acquired Seattle-based machine learning startup Turi in 2016 and Union Bay Networks in 2014.
Apple has invested heavily in AI, including efforts to build on-device AI capabilities. But analysts say the company has fallen behind competitors. “What’s notable about artificial intelligence is that Apple has devoted considerable resources to the technology and has little to show for it,” Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
The Cupertino company earlier this year inked a big lease for more office space near downtown Seattle. It’s one of more than 100 tech companies with satellite engineering hubs in the Seattle region, tapping into the area’s robust tech talent pool.
WhyLabs spun out of Seattle’s Allen Institute for AI, the Seattle-based research institution that also housed Xnor. It was valued at $37 million following a $10 million Series A round in 2021, according to PitchBook.
It’s one of many AI observability tools riding tailwinds from the rapid adoption of AI software and the associated infrastructure needs. Last year WhyLabs rolled out a “new iteration” of the company’s platform designed for real-time security monitoring of generative AI apps.
WhyLabs CEO Alessya Visnjic previously spent eight years at Amazon helping develop its machine learning infrastructure. She co-founded WhyLabs with Andy Dang and Sam Gracie, also former Amazon employees. Co-founder Maria Karaivanova was a former Cloudflare executive and principal at Madrona.
AI Fund, helmed by Coursera co-founder and chair Andrew Ng, co-led the Series A round with Defy Partners, another Silicon Valley firm.
Other backers include Bezos Expeditions, the venture arm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, along with Seattle firms Madrona and Ascend.
WhyLabs is ranked No. 81 on the GeekWire 200, our list of top privately held startups in the Pacific Northwest. It was a finalist for Startup of the Year at the GeekWire Awards in 2023.
We’ll update this post if we hear more about the deal.
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