Inside Meta’s $40 Mn Acquisition of Audio Start-Up WaveForms AI for Lifelike Voice

Meta Platforms has acquired WaveForms AI, a December 2024–launched start-up that leverages artificial intelligence to detect and replicate emotion in audio. The deal, first reported by The Information, brings WaveForms’ core technology, and its co-founders, into Meta’s newly formed Superintelligence Labs division.

WaveForms AI was co-founded by Alexis Conneau, an audio researcher with prior stints at Meta and OpenAI, and Coralie Lemaitre, a former Google ad strategist. The start-up had raised US $40 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, betting on the demand for emotionally nuanced voice interfaces in everything from digital assistants to immersive virtual-reality experiences.

Post-acquisition, Conneau and Lemaitre will assume senior technical roles within Superintelligence Labs, Meta’s flagship AI research arm. Their arrival follows the hire of Johan Schalkwyk, formerly a Google Fellow renowned for speech-AI breakthroughs, who joined the division as Voice Lead earlier this year.

Building AI-Audio Ecosystem

Meta’s purchase of WaveForms AI is the latest in a string of moves to cement its audio-AI capabilities. Last month the company acquired Play AI, a start-up focused on crafting human-like voices for conversational agents. With these acquisitions and in-house hires, Meta aims to infuse its social and metaverse platforms with lifelike, emotionally attuned audio interactions.

Beyond audio, Meta has aggressively recruited top AI talent across the industry. Recent arrivals include Daniel Gross, founder of Safe Superintelligence; Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s Foundation Models team; and Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO. These hires underscore Meta’s ambition to compete head-to-head with leading AI labs on both foundational models and specialised applications.

Global AI Race

Meta’s talent hunt is mirrored by other tech giants eager to boost their AI capabilities. Alphabet’s Google recently completed a US $2.4 billion deal to license code-generation technology from start-up Windsurf, simultaneously hiring CEO Varun Mohan and core R&D staff to strengthen its Gemini project.

These “exploding offers” and strategic acquisitions reflect a broader shift away from traditional M&A towards selective equity stakes and targeted poaching, as companies seek rapid capability gains while sidestepping regulatory scrutiny.

As the US, China, Europe and other regions pour resources into AI, the struggle for talent has become as critical as breakthroughs in model architectures or chip innovations.