Fayteq, a small German startup that develops technologies for video manipulation, has shut down all sales of its products and services, according to its website. Deutsche Startups reported this morning that the company, based in central Germany's Erfurt, has in fact been acquired by Facebook. The social media giant later confirmed the acquisition with the news site Variety.
The blog mentions that one of the startup's investors, bm|t, published a news item about the acquisition (without mentioning Facebook as the buyer) but this has seemingly since been removed.
Fayteq was founded in August 2011 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Ilmenau, and employs about 10 people according to LinkedIn.
According to Siegfried Vater, a business angel and partner of Fayteq, the startup offered "innovative technologies in the area of off-line and real-time video manipulation, removing the border between reality and fiction." He also writes that the company provides (or used to provide, at least) "sophisticated solutions for digital product placement, i.e. insertion and replacement of advertisements, seamless object insertion in and removal from video streams as well as logo removal from video sequences".
One of its products was an advanced motion tracker called FayIN, reviewed by Videomaker.com here about a year ago.
There are a variety of ways Facebook can use technologies like this to enhance its video streaming and advertising services, and perhaps even its virtual reality offerings, but we have not yet been able to confirm that the American Internet giant made the purchase that resulted in Fayteq abruptly halting sales.
We will update this post if and when we learn more.
Facebook has bought numerous European tech companies in the past, including the likes of MSQRD (Belarus), InfiniLED (Ireland), Two Big Ears (UK) and ProtoGeo (Finland).
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments