Meta in Advanced Talks to Acquire AI Voice Startup PlayAI

Meta in talks to acquire voice cloning startup Play AI | TechCrunch

Alongside bolstering its AI research talent pool, Meta seems to be keen to flesh out its consumer-facing AI features. The company is in discussions to acquire a voice cloning startup called Play AI, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. The tech giant aims to buy the startup's tech and bring on board some of its staff, the report said. Play AI lets anyone clone different kinds of voices that they can use for AI-powered use cases, such as customer service, per its website. The startup has raised $23.5 million in total, and its investors include 500 Startups, Kindred Ventures, Race Capital, 500 Global and Soma Capital, per Crunchbase. Meta currently lets creators on its social platforms build their own chatbots, and has added video editing capabilities to its Meta AI chatbot. Acquiring a voice startup would let the company bake in audio features into its creative suite. Meta and Play AI did not immediately return requests for comment.

Meta in Talks to Buy AI Voice Startup PlayAI in Push for Talent

Meta Platforms Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire PlayAI, a small startup using artificial intelligence to replicate voices, part of the social media company's push to nab top talent and catch up in the AI race. Meta is expected to acquire the Palo Alto, California-based startup's technology and some of its employees, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named sharing private information. The deal is not yet finalized and could still change, the people said. Financial terms under discussion could not be learned.

Meta is reportedly looking to acquire AI voice replicator PlayAI

The company will be getting its technology and some of its employees if the deal pushes through. Meta is in currently in acquisition talks with PlayAI, a California-based startup that provides its users with an AI voice cloning tool, according to Bloomberg. According to the news organization, Meta is looking to buy the startup's technology, as well as to absorb some of its employees into the company. The parties haven't come to an agreement yet, but if the acquisition pushes through, it could give the company the technology it needs to expand its voice AI offerings. It could roll out more voice features for its AI chatbot and assistant, as well as for its smart glasses from Ray-Ban and Oakley. While both companies refused to confirm their talks to Bloomberg, the potential purchase of an AI voice cloning tool doesn't sound out of left field for Meta based on its recent activities. Company chief Mark Zuckerberg has been personally involved in a hiring spree for high-level AI experts over the past few months to form the company's new AI Superintelligence team. Zuckerberg has reportedly been offering experts from rival companies like OpenAI compensation packages as big as $100 million, and a few had already accepted. Just a few days ago, Meta finalized a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, a startup that provides other companies with data labeling and model evaluation services for AI training. In exchange, Scale AI's founder and CEO Alexandr Wang joined Meta and is believed to be heading its new Superintelligence lab. Before Meta decided to invest in Scale AI, it also considered acquiring Perplexity AI. PlayAI's website says its tool can mimic or clone a user's voice and can generate voices as real as humans, which can be deployed to websites, apps and phones. While its acquisition could lead to useful voice features for Meta's apps and websites, the company could also use the tool to make more life-like AI chatbots. Zuckerberg's vision of the future, after all, is a world where people's AI friends outnumber human ones. We may already be seeing the beginnings of such a world, considering chatbot romances have become increasingly popular over the past few months.

Meta Might Be Planning to Buy PlayAI Startup and Its Employees

Meta's acquisition deal is said to include the startup's top talent Meta is reportedly planning to acquire the Palo Alto, California-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup PlayAI. As per the report, the acquisition is aimed at bolstering its AI division to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Google. The Menlo Park-based social media giant has been aggressively pushing out new AI models and AI features for its platforms. The reported acquisition plans could help the company gain more employees skilled in AI, as well as the startup's in-house technology stack. According to a Bloomberg report, the tech giant is considering purchasing PlayAI. The AI startup was founded in 2019 by Hammad Syed and Mahmoud Felfel. It specialises in building real-time conversational agents, voice interfaces, and in-house AI voice models. Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the report claimed that the move to acquire the startup comes from Meta's desire to hire top talent in the AI space. The acquisition deal, which is yet to be finalised, reportedly also includes a provision to hire some of the startup's employees. While the acquisition is expected to be completed soon, terms can still change, claimed the report. Notably, the financial terms of the deal are currently not known. Meta appears to be actively looking for AI startups to acquire. Several reports earlier this month claimed that Mark Zuckerberg's team held meetings with Perplexity to discuss a possible acquisition. The company has reportedly also made attempts to acquire Runway AI, a startup focused on developing AI models for video generation. Apart from adding more AI talent to its team, the acquisition of PlayAI can also help Meta in other ways. The social media giant recently added a two-way voice conversation feature to its chatbot, however, in terms of end product, it is just a low-latency text-to-speech (TTS) tool. Compared to competitors such as ChatGPT or Gemini, this is one area where Meta AI is significantly behind. However, this can change with the acquisition of PlayAI, which specialises in building AI voice generation models and voice interfaces. With this capability, the social media giant can scale up its own AI infrastructure and provide a voice experience that sounds more expressive and human-like.

Meta's Play For Voice AI Could Shake Up The Competition - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Meta Platforms META is exploring the acquisition of voice-cloning artificial intelligence startup PlayAI and some of its employees. Financial terms of the transaction remain undisclosed, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The move marks Meta's plan to build a "superintelligence" lab to unlock value. The update coincided with growing competition in the AI voice assistant space. In March, OpenAI updated its ChatGPT voice assistant to make it more personable and responsive. Also Read: Meta Secures More Clean Energy For Power Hungry AI And Data Center Growth Also in March, conversational AI solutions provider SoundHound AI expanded its partnership with Nvidia Corp NVDA to enhance the speed and efficiency of its AI-driven solutions. In June, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling startup Scale AI and tapped its CEO to lead its AI team. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had tapped AI researchers from Google, Sesame AI, and OpenAI for its AI team. Meta reportedly discussed acquiring AI video startup Runway before completing its Scale AI investment. Meta's other AI acquisition pursuits in 2025 included Safe Superintelligence and Perplexity AI. Meta held $70.23 billion in cash and equivalents as of March 31, 2025. Wall Street firms, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and KeyBanc, noted Meta as a leader in the digital ad space backed by strong platform demand, continued momentum in the ad business, and capex investments. Price Action: META stock was trading higher by 0.75% to $731.52 at last check Friday. Read Next: Google Cloud Hires Former Oracle CFO As AI Race Heats Up Photo: Skorzewiak/Shutterstock METAMeta Platforms Inc$731.500.75%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum85.98Growth92.18Quality87.98Value24.84Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewAAPLApple Inc$201.570.28%GOOGLAlphabet Inc$173.860.18%MSFTMicrosoft Corp$497.44-%NVDANVIDIA Corp$157.351.50%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Why Meta Platforms Stock Topped the Market Today | The Motley Fool

Somewhat atypically, Meta Platforms (META 2.54%) stock rose higher on Thursday because of a potential acquisition. The social media giant, not typically known for being an aggressive asset buyer, saw its shares close more than 2% higher as a result. This was on a day when the S&P 500 index could only muster an 0.8% rally. It helps greatly that the apparent acquisition target concentrates on artificial intelligence (AI), the hot technology of our age. On Thursday, Bloomberg, citing unnamed "people familiar with the matter," wrote that Meta was close to acquiring privately held PlayAI, a niche company specializing in AI voice replication technology. In the article, which was disseminated in other media outlets, Bloomberg said that its PlayAI play was a component of Meta's strategy to advance its AI capabilities and offerings. When and if a deal is reached for the company, Meta would bring at least some PlayAI into its workforce. The story did not detail any financial particulars of the potential acquisition. Neither Meta nor PlayAI has provided an official response to the Bloomberg article. With its vast financial resources -- it held over $70 billion in cash and cash equivalents alone at the end of its most recently reported quarter -- Meta can pay handsome premiums for assets it desires. Given that, it's believable that if it truly is interested in PlayAI, it's making the company a compelling buyout offer. The impact of a potential acquisition is a bit tougher to gauge. PlayAI is an AI company, yes, and that'll get investors excited simply on that basis. Voice recognition is a fairly niche (albeit useful) technology, so I don't think this apparently looming deal will be a ground shifter on its own. It's worth watching Meta's other moves in the AI sphere, though, to gauge how it plans to leverage the technology.

Report: Meta in Talks to Acquire Voice AI Platform PlayAI | PYMNTS.com

The companies are in advanced talks on a deal in which Meta would acquire PlayAI's technology and some of its employees, Bloomberg reported Thursday (June 26), citing unnamed sources. The deal has not been finalized, and its provisions could change, according to the report. Reached by PYMNTS, Meta declined to comment on the report. PlayAI did not immediately respond to PYMNTS' request for comment. An acquisition of PlayAI could help Meta bring more voice features to its AI assistant and its smartglasses, the Bloomberg report said. PlayAI said in a November blog post that it raised $21 million in seed and pre-seed funding to "craft the voice of intelligence and be the cornerstone of voice-first human-computer interaction." The company said in the post that it had released a text-to-speech model with voice cloning called Play 3.0 mini, a no-code voice agent platform, real-time application programming interfaces (APIs) for conversational voice agents and multi-turn speech model called PlayDialog. In a November press release announcing the seed round, PlayAI Co-founder and CEO Mahmoud Felfel said: "Speech as an interface is exploding in popularity, and we knew it was a massive opportunity from the get-go. Building voice agents that can converse like humans and autonomously handle complex tasks is no easy feat, and I'm immensely proud of what our team has achieved." It was reported Tuesday (June 24) that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has approached several high-profile AI startups for potential acquisition. While most of the AI startups said no to Zuckerberg, he succeeded with Scale AI. Meta is investing $14.3 billion for a 49% stake and hiring away its CEO, Alexandr Wang, who will lead Meta's superintelligence efforts. Zuckerberg is seeking to beef up its AI efforts after reportedly being frustrated by the pace of advancements of its flagship open-source large language model, Llama. He has also been personally campaigning to hire new AI talent to bolster the company's efforts. It was reported Thursday that Meta convinced three of OpenAI's researchers to join the social media giant in pursuing its AI efforts.