Apple held acquisition talks with Lux Optics during the summer of 2025, though the deal fell through in September. The failed transaction has now become public through an unexpected channel: a legal dispute between the software company's two co-founders, one of whom later joined Apple.
Lux Optics develops Halide, a third-party camera application with advanced manual controls that appeal to serious mobile photographers. The company also makes Kino for video, Spectre for long exposure shots, and Orion for iPad functionality. Apple wanted to upgrade the built-in camera app with more advanced controls, and acquiring Halide would have given Apple direct access to that software technology.
The timing made strategic sense. Apple aims to bring the iPhone 18 Pro's cameras to a professional grade with advanced features, and the company is already rumoured to be introducing variable aperture to its upcoming iPhone 18 Pro models. Better hardware needed better software to match.
But ambition met resistance. Co-founders Ben Sandofsky and Sebastiaan de With concluded that future updates to Halide could increase the company's valuation and ended the acquisition talks. The pair believed they could command a higher price from Apple by growing the app first rather than accepting the original offer.
What happened next suggests the relationship between the co-founders was already fragile. Sandofsky started investigating de With for the alleged misuse of company funds shortly after the talks with Apple ended. Sandofsky filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court accusing de With of improperly using more than $150,000 in Lux company funds for personal expenses since 2022, as well as providing confidential material and source code to Apple.
The timing raises questions. Two months after the talks concluded without a deal, Apple set about recruiting de With. Sandofsky fired de With in December over financial misconduct, and de With announced he had joined Apple's design team in January.
De With's legal representatives offer a different version. They deny that he "used, transferred, or disclosed any Lux intellectual property" as part of his new job at Apple. They argue the lawsuit was filed only after de With raised concerns with Sandofsky about financial irregularities at Lux and requested access to financial records and payments, suggesting it was a "retaliatory response to those efforts and an attempt to avoid scrutiny of that conduct".
Apple is not named as a defendant in the case and is not accused of any wrongdoing. The company's interest in beefing up its camera app is straightforward: Apple apparently wanted to bolster the built-in Camera app, which is said to be a top priority, with the iPhone 18 Pro expected to "match professional-grade cameras in terms of certain advanced features".
For users of Halide, the outcome is neither good nor bad. Users can still look forward to some software improvements to the built-in camera app, since that's reportedly one of Apple's priorities. Whether those improvements would have been faster or deeper with a full acquisition remains unknowable. What is clear is that Apple got what it wanted, or at least part of it: one of the people who made Halide special now works on Apple's camera software.