Apple Funds Finisar, Maker Of Its Face ID Technology

Apple had announced, in May, a $1 Billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which was aimed at financing domestic manufacturers in the U.S. and also creating more jobs. The first company that Apple funded with $200 million was Corning Inc., the company that currently makes the Gorilla Glass which is used in Apple’s touchscreens. The tech giant made another notable investment this week when it announced that it would be funding Finisar Corp. with $390 million on Wednesday. Finisar Corp. is the company that is responsible for the technology behind Face ID, that is the company that developed the face recognition technology that Apple is currently using in its iPhone X.

Finisar Inc. is based out of Sunnyvale, California and the investment that Apple made into it is going to help the company boost the production of the vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, which Apple incorporates into its Face ID, Animoji, Portrait Mode selfies with the TrueDepth Camera on the iPhone X and the proximity-sensing capabilities of AirPods. With the investment, Finisar Inc. plans to open up another manufacturing plant in Sherman, Texas, which is about an hour away from Dallas. This plant will help provide over 500 more jobs excluding the ones that the investment will help create at the company’s already running plant in Allen, just outside of Dallas.

The announcement on Wednesday came as a relief call for Finisar Inc., as the price of the stocks of the company had been plummeting. Just in this year, the price of the stocks of the company had dropped down by almost 40%, given the fact that the company put up disappointing numbers for the past two quarters. However, with the announcement on Wednesday, the price of the stocks for Finisar Inc. soared almost 30% just as the bell opened on Wednesday.

Apple has also acquired Shazam, the application that their digital assistant Siri helps its users to recognize the different songs playing on their iPhones.