Apple has acquired personal assistant app startup Cue for between $50 to $60 million, shoring up rumors from last month that the two companies were in talks. Cupertino confirmed the acquisition on Thursday but declined to offer any specifics related to the deal according to reports.
The company’s app by the same name shut down earlier this week without mentioning why. A message on their main page said Cue Premium users would receive a prorated refund and personal user information had been permanently deleted.
The company got its start as Greplin some years back with a focus on social search. It was backed by a number of venture capital firms including SV Angel, Sequoia Capital, Lerer Ventures and Index Ventures. The company reportedly raised a $10 million round of funding in November of last year through Index Ventures although the startup elected not to announce it.
The company’s initial offering worked much like contextual notifications in iOS 7 or Google Now although it was available before either of those services. It would index content from Gmail as well as social networking sites. Running a query for a name, for example, would find instances of it in your LinkedIn account, across your e-mails and even documents from Dropbox.
The company shifted gears in 2012 and transformed into Cue, offering up a personal assistant app for iOS that was capable of turning data like restaurant reservations for flight information into a daily agenda.
