Meta Acquires Voice Generation Start-Up PlayAI to Boost its AI Ambitions

Meta has acquired PlayAI, a start-up that uses AI to generate human‑sounding voices, Bloomberg reported.

An internal memo stated that the “entire PlayAI team” will join Meta next week. As per the report, the PlayAI team will report to Johan Schalkwyk, who recently joined Meta from Sesame AI, a voice AI startup.

Bloomberg News previously reported that the companies were in discussions regarding the acquisition.

According to Meta’s memo, 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.”

This year, Meta has made AI its primary focus, investing heavily in infrastructure such as chips and data centres while recruiting top talent to develop AI models and features. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced a major restructuring of the company’s AI division, with former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang leading the new Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Meta’s AI Push

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently claimed that Meta offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million to entice key personnel from OpenAI, a move he described as “crazy” and indicative of escalating competition within the AI industry.

Meta “poached” three OpenAI researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, who were responsible for establishing OpenAI’s office in Zurich, Switzerland, last year.

Meta also paid $14.3 billion for a 49 % stake in Scale AI, a startup that assists firms in building their own AI models. Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, has stepped down to lead Meta’s new “superintelligence” division.

The social media giant is now focusing on recruiting Daniel Gross, co‑founder and CEO of SSI, and Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, to strengthen its new superintelligence lab, which is overseen by Alexandr Wang.

Meta is aggressively pursuing top AI talent, attempting to poach OpenAI’s Noam Brown and Google DeepMind’s Koray Kavukcuoglu, though both efforts were unsuccessful.

Despite these setbacks, Meta has successfully recruited researchers such as Jack Rae from Google DeepMind and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI to bolster its new “superintelligence” team, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.