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Art by Clark MillerApple Acquisition Talks, Fraud Accusations: Behind One App Startup’s Nasty Split
Lux Optics won a following for its hit Halide photo app. But a new lawsuit chronicles an acrimonious rift between the startup’s founders and aborted acquisition talks with Apple.
Last summer, Apple held talks to acquire Lux Optics, a tiny startup that makes Halide, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed camera apps in the App Store.
The deal never happened. Instead, a couple months after the talks ended, Apple began recruiting Sebastiaan de With, Lux’s co-founder and designer—a revelation to the startup’s CEO, Ben Sandofsky, who learned of it while investigating de With late last year over an unrelated matter. He fired de With in December, and de With announced he had joined Apple’s design team in January.