nMeta has acquired California-based voice AI startup Play AI, in a move aimed at bolstering its capabilities in generative voice technology, according to a new report by Bloomberg. The deal sees the entire Play AI team joining Meta next week, where they will begin working under Johan Schalkwyk, a former senior speech AI leader at Google and a recent Meta recruit.
Play AI is best known for its advanced voice cloning tool, which allows users to replicate their own voices or generate new human-like voices. These can be deployed across digital platforms, including websites, mobile apps, and phones, a functionality that aligns closely with Meta’s growing ambitions in AI-driven interaction.
According to an internal memo viewed by Bloomberg, Meta sees Play AI’s technology as a "great match" for its existing AI initiatives, including Meta AI, AI Characters, and its wearables division. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
This acquisition is the latest in Meta's aggressive recruitment and expansion efforts within the AI sector. The company recently launched a Superintelligence Lab, with a mission to build artificial intelligence systems smarter than humans. In June, Meta secured a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, a startup known for AI data labelling, and brought on Alexandr Wang, its CEO, to lead the new lab.
Meta has been heavily investing in acquiring talent from rival companies. It has reportedly offered bonuses of up to $100 million to AI experts from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Apple. The company has already hired multiple engineers who worked on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4, as well as talent from the Google Gemini team. Notably, Apple’s top AI executive working on advanced features also left for Meta earlier this year.
With the integration of Play AI’s voice technology, Meta appears to be doubling down on AI-generated voice as a core interface, both for future social experiences and its hardware roadmap, including possible use cases in AR/VR and smart glasses.
As the AI arms race intensifies, Meta’s latest move signals a strategic emphasis on speech and voice interfaces as the next frontier of human-computer interaction.
