According to TechCrunch, Google has purchased the artificial intelligence (AI) company Alter, which provided developers with a technological stack that could be used to build avatar systems. According to the article, the sale cost $100 million, but the corporation has not acknowledged this figure.
Facemoji was founded last year and raised $3 million in a seed round led by Play Ventures and featuring Twitter and Roosh Ventures. In reaction to the popularity of Apple’s Memoji, Alter intended to provide game developers with the ability to create 3D avatar systems without the need to connect to several networks.
Alter made its Core technology available to the general public in February by making its SDK available to developers via its GitHub repository. The SDK allowed for the development of a real-time 3D avatar system that included face motion capture and other components.
Many people believe the acquisition is due to the company’s competitiveness with TikTok, whose software delivers comparable 3D-style avatars.
The purchase, according to reports, took place two months ago. A quick look at the company’s Discord server reveals that developers were speculating about a buy as early as September, when the startup’s website went down.
Soon after, the company announced that it will cease code access and archive GitHub on November 29, and that SDKs would no longer be updated or supported.
Based on LinkedIn, some former Alter employees are now working for Google in a variety of product design and user experience (UX) positions. Raszka’s LinkedIn page says that he does not work for Google.
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