Further, this is probably their goal. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple bought something like this as system-wide background noise canceling would be a fantastic OS feature.

iPhones already have this feature if you hold your phone up to your ear. There is a microphone in the back of the phone near the camera that phase cancels out background noise from the input from the front mic.

They need this for the AirPods then. Everyone I call while outside in NYC says the microphone is super sensitive and picks up all the surrounding noise.

They just filled that patent. 5 mics on the device for beam for separation

That's really cool! I knew that it did sound canceling but I thought it was all software!

I remember when they proudly talked about all the mics on the iPhone 5 used for this when they presented it on stage.

Maybe they can do semi-dense audio cancelling with some ML model for cancellation on a Mac as well.

they also recently added 4 (or 5?) mics on the new iPad Pro so that it could do facetime calls while cancelling out the feedback.

Wouldn’t be surprised if a software update makes it possible to use all of those mics for some very good ambient noise cancellation during face time calls

Or they hope to license this and have it built into every service by default.