Apple's plans to enhance the iPhone 18 Pro's Camera app led it to consider acquiring Halidebut the talks ultimately collapsed and were followed by a fierce legal dispute between the startup's co-foundersaccording to The Information reports.
In the summer of 2025Apple reportedly held discussions to acquire Lux Opticsthe developer behind the popular iPhone camera apps HalideKinoand Spectre. The company concluded that it could get a better offer from Apple in the future following updates to the app. Two months after the talks concluded without a dealApple set about recruiting Lux's co-founder and designer Sebastian de With.
Lux CEO and co-founder Ben Sandofsky is said to have fired de With in December over financial misconduct. de With announced that he had joined Apple's design team in January.
Sandofsky has now filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court of Santa Cruz against de Withaccusing him of improperly using more than $150,000 in Lux company funds to pay for personal expenses since 2022as well as providing confidential material and source code from Lux to Apple.
During the discussions to acquire LuxApple employees purportedly told the startup that its intellectual property was a major consideration in evaluating the company. Apple apparently wanted to acquire Lux to bolster the built-in Camera appwhich is said to be "top priority for the company right now." The iPhone 18 Pro will "match professional-grade cameras in terms of certain advanced features," necessitating an upgrade of the built-in Camera app. Apple is not named as a defendant in the case and it is not accused of any wrongdoing.
de With's legal representatives say that the lawsuit is meritless and deny that he "usedtransferredor disclosed any Lux intellectual property" as part of his new job at Apple. They added that the lawsuit was only filed after de With raised concerns with Sandofsky about financial irregularities at Lux and had requested access to its financial records and paymentssuggesting that it was a "retaliatory response to those efforts and an attempt to avoid scrutiny of that conduct."
