Apple buys Israel's PrimeSense for $430m: Report

JERUSALEM - Apple has bought PrimeSense, an Israeli maker of chips that enable three-dimensional (3D) machine vision, for US$345 million (S$430 million), the Calcalist financial newspaper reported on Sunday without citing sources.

PrimeSense has raised US$85 million from Israeli and US venture capital funds such as Canaan Partners Global, Gemini Israel and Genesis Partners, Calcalist said.

"We are focused on building a prosperous company while bringing 3D sensing and natural interaction to the mass market in a variety of markets such as interactive living room and mobile devices," a spokeswoman for PrimeSense said. "We do not comment on what any of our partners, customers or potential customers are doing and we do not relate to rumours or recycled rumours."

PrimeSense's sensing technology, which gives digital devices the ability to observe a scene in three dimensions, was used to help power Microsoft's Xbox Kinect.

The acquisition of PrimeSense would be Apple's second purchase of an Israeli company. It bought flash storage chip maker Anobit in January 2012.