By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO, January 29 (Reuters) – Apple on Thursday it said it has acquired Q.ai, an Israeli startup it works on artificial intelligence audio technology.

Apple did not disclose terms of the deal for ‌Q.ai, which was backed by venture capital firms Matter Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, ‌Exor and GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. The deal valued the startup at about $1.6 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Apple did not say how it will use Q.ai’s technology, but said the startup has been working on new machine learning applications to help devices understand whispered speech and to improve audio in difficult environments.

Q.ai filed a patent application last year to use “facial skin micro-movements” to detect spoken or spoken words, identify a person and assess their emotions, heart rate, breathing rate and other indicators.

All 100 Q.ai employees, including CEO Aviad Maizels and co-founders Yonatan Wexler and Avi Barliya, will join Apple, the companies said.

Maizels founded three-dimensional sensing company PrimeSense and sold it to Apple in 2013. The PrimeSense deal eventually helped Apple move away from fingerprint sensors on its iPhones and toward facial recognition technology.

In a statement, Maizels said: “Joining Apple opens up extraordinary possibilities to push the boundaries and realize the full potential of what we’ve created, and we’re excited to bring these experiences to people everywhere.”

Apple has put new AI features into its AirPods headphones, last year introducing technology that allows them to translate speech between languages.

Q.ai “is a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning,” Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to acquire the company, with Aviad at the helm, and we’re even more excited for what’s to come.”

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Cynthia Osterman)