Meta continues to expand its AI business by acquiring voice startup PlayAI

Meta has acquired the voice startup PlayAI to strengthen its portfolio, according to a Bloomberg report, following a trend of acquisitions of AI startups. The company did not reveal the specific details of the agreement.

An internal memo informed that the PlayAI team will be joining the Meta team in the following week as part of the acquisition agreement. According to the report, the memo reportedly states that PlayAI’s “work in creating natural voices, along with a platform for easy voice creation, is a great match for our work and road map, across AI Characters, Meta AI, Wearables and audio content creation.”

Meta said internally that this startup’s expertise in natural voice creation is in line with Meta’s goals in AI Characters, Meta AI, Wearables, and audio content creation.

Not only does this acquisition spree add these companies to Meta’s portfolio, but it also brings the talent. This strategy includes investments in infrastructure, such as data centres, to keep up with other big players, like OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic. 

As part of the ambitious plan in AI, Meta also acquired 49% of Scale AI, a company that offers tools and services for data annotation, model evaluation, and synthetic data generation, helping organisations train and improve machine learning models, especially in industries like autonomous vehicles, defence, and e-commerce.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced a restructuring of the AI division, renaming it Superintelligence Labs, and recruiting experts with high compensation packages. Scale AI’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, joined the team as leader.

A report by The Verge stated that Meta has hired 10 of OpenAI’s top researchers and model developers, with compensation reaching up to $300 million over 4 years. However, other employees of AI giants have also been approached with offers.