According to a report by Bloomberg, Meta, the owner of social media giants like WhatsApp and Instagram, has completed a deal to acquire Playai, an artificial intelligence startup focusing on voice technology. According to an internal memo viewed by the agency, the “Playai Overall” team will be joining the meta next week.
The Playai team reports to Johan Schalkwyk, who recently joined Tech Giant from another Voice AI startup called Sesame AI. Meta spokesman confirmed the acquisition of Bloomberg but did not disclose the amount the company paid to buy Playai.
According to the memo, the Playai team's “platform for creating natural voices and simple voice creation is perfect for our work and roadmap in creating AI characters, meta AI, wearables and audio content.”
In particular, Meta has made AI a top priority this year, from investing in infrastructure such as chips and data centers to adopting new talent to build the latest AI models and capabilities. The company's eye-opening moments have turned pale, not gaining much recognition compared to competition with Google and Openai, with the launch of the 4 Lama model earlier this year.
Since then, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a new AI division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which aims to achieve “Superintelligence” in AI systems in front of other companies. The division is led by former CEO of AI Startup Scale AI, Alexandr Wang, and Meta recently acquired for $14.3 billion.
Apart from Wang, Meta has poached the talents of top AI such as Openai and Google, offering up to $100 million bonuses to new employees. Among the major talents poached by the company are manufacturers of GPT-4 and GPT-4O models.
Meta also reportedly brings in Ruoming Pang, Apple's top executive in charge of artificial intelligence, to offer a salary package that exceeds $200 million.
