Meta is in advanced talks to buy voice AI startup PlayAI, Bloomberg reports. The deal would snag PlayAI’s voice tech and some staff. No deal is final yet, and terms could shift.
Meta declined to comment. PlayAI hasn’t responded.
The acquisition would boost Meta’s voice AI for its smartglasses and assistant. PlayAI raised $21M seed funding last year to build voice-first human-computer interaction. It offers a voice cloning TTS model, no-code voice agent tools, real-time APIs, and multi-turn speech models. 
PlayAI CEO Mahmoud Felfel said in November:
“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.”
Meta recently courted several AI startups for acquisitions. It snagged a big deal with Scale AI, investing $14.3 billion for a 49% stake and hiring Scale CEO Alexandr Wang to lead Meta’s superintelligence.
Mark Zuckerberg is pushing hard to ramp up Meta’s AI efforts, frustrated by the slow pace of its Llama large language model. Meta also recently hired three researchers from OpenAI to boost its AI talent pool.
