Notes From All Over -- The Mid-Day Edition -- August 20, 2020

Big story of the day: Apple quietly acquired Israel's Camerai, formerly Tipit, a specialist in AR and camera tech. Link here.

Sometime between 2018 and 2019, the iPhone giant reportedly acquired and shut down Camerai, an augmented reality and computer vision company based out of Israel, which used to be called Tipit.Calcalist said that the startup sold for several tens of millions of dollars. 

From being founded in 2015, Camerai had raised around $5 million — including a $2.5 million round in 2017 and another unreported $2.5 million in 2018. 

It seems that the acquisition came on the heels of multiple approaches from a number of companies at a time when AR was arguably at a peak of hype and many big tech companies wanted a piece of the action. (Recall that 2018 was the year when Magic Leap raised nearly $1 billion in a single round of funding.) 

Back in 2018, we heard rumors that those approaching and looking at the startup included Apple, Samsung, and Alibaba. 

The Calcalist report said that Camerai employees joined Apple’s computer vision team, and that the company’s technology has been incorporated into Apple products already. It’s not clear specifically where and when, but recall that both iOS 13 and iOS 14 have featured big software updates to the camera.

The market, what a huge turnaround! Very, very negative pre-market and at the open, all three indices are not green, and AAPL is within two dimes of hitting another "decade": $470/share.

Battle royale: Lyft will suspend operations in California at midnight tonight, 11:59 p.m., Thursday, August 20, 2020. All eyes are on Uber. Thousands of drivers will lose any income they might have had. Thousands will lose income that kept food on the table. Watch for domestic violence to increase with these unemployed (mostly) men home with nothing to do. Not even any decent sports.

Other stocks I like to follow for various reasons:

• UNP: down quite a bit over the past two days, is still negative but barely and is now trading above $190 again;
• IMUX: down almost 4%;
• SRE: down 1.4%
• PFE: up 0.64%; trading at $38.51;
• JNJ: up a bit, trading at $151 in round numbers;