Apple agrees to $350 mn acquisition of Israeli chipmaker PrimeSense

Bangalore: Apple Inc agreed to buy Israel-based PrimeSense Ltd, a developer of chips that enable three-dimensional machine vision, for about $350 million, Bloomberg reported on Sunday citing a source.

PrimeSense's sensing technology, which gives digital devices the ability to observe a scene in three dimensions, was used to help power Microsoft's Xbox Kinect.

Apple's interest in PrimeSense was first reported in July by the Israel-based Calacist news website.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," a company spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told Reuters via email.

PrimeSense could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular US business hours.

The PrimeSense deal makes it Apple's second purchase of an Israeli company. It bought flash storage chip maker Anobit in January 2012.

PrimeSense's investors include Canaan Partners, Silver Lake, Gemini Israel Funds and Genesis Partners, Bloomberg reported.