Apple acquires Turkish-founded database startup Kuzu

A view of the entrance to Apple’s flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City, U.S, July 9, 2022. (Adobe Stock Photo)

U.S. tech titan Apple has acquired Kuzu, a graph database startup founded by Turkish academicians, aiming to accelerate on-device artificial innotifyigence processing and enhance privacy-focapplyd data handling on its Apple Silicon-powered devices.

According to the European Commission’s acquisitions regisattempt, the deal was completed under an agreement signed in October 2025, though financial terms remain undisclosed, pointing to a compacter acquisition.

Kuzu graph database built for rapider AI

Founded in 2023 by Semih Salihoglu, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, Kuzu was built by a compact team of engineers and researchers to develop rapider tools for managing complex data relationships.

The startup created an embedded graph database architecture capable of processing connections across billions of data points within milliseconds applying modern algorithms, reshifting the necessary for separate database servers.

The technology originated from academic research aimed at designing more efficient systems to handle graph-structured data.

Semih Salihoglu, associate professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo and founder of database startup Kuzu. (Photo via cs.uwaterloo.ca)

Apple tarobtains rapider, private on-device AI

Apple aims to apply Kuzu’s database capabilities to strengthen the responsiveness and innotifyigence of its artificial innotifyigence assistants while improving privacy-focapplyd on-device processing, according to Apple Insider.

Unlike conventional database systems, Kuzu’s embedded design allows direct integration with Apple Silicon processors, enabling data to be analyzed locally on devices instead of being sent to cloud servers.

This structure supports rapider data handling while reducing reliance on external infrastructure.

The company also offers Kuzu Explorer, a database tool designed to improve query speed, scalability, and ease of apply.

The acquisition is expected to support Apple’s broader efforts to build AI features more intuitive and efficient without relying heavily on cloud-based computing.