Zuckerberg's "AI ambitions" add a crucial piece to the puzzle! Meta (META.US) will include AI voice leader PlayAI under its banner.

According to an internal memo seen by the media, Meta (META.US) has completed the acquisition process of PlayAI, a small AI startup focused on AI speech technology. The entire PlayAI team will join Facebook's parent company Meta (META.US) next week. It is understood that the PlayAI team will report to Johan Schalkwyk, who recently joined Meta from another AI startup focused on AI speech, Sesame AI Inc. Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "AI ambitions" have added another key piece. Zuckerberg will push forward the advancement and integration of artificial intelligence technology into Meta's software ecosystem, making it the top priority for Meta this year. Meta is investing approximately $65 billion in AI core infrastructure such as AI server clusters, high-performance Ethernet switch systems, and actively recruiting top talent globally to build the strongest AI models and develop a powerful AI application software ecosystem based on the Meta system. Meta's internal memo stated that the core technology team of PlayAI "works in creating natural speech and providing a convenient AI speech generation platform, which perfectly aligns with our plans in areas such as AI virtual characters, Meta AI ecosystem, intelligent glasses, wearable devices, audio AI content creation in the Facebook software ecosystem." The financial terms of the PlayAI acquisition were not disclosed. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the transaction but declined to comment further. Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced a major reorganization of the company's AI business division, appointing former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to lead the newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs. PlayAI (formerly PlayHT) is a startup focused on AI speech synthesis and AI speech intelligence. The company provides low-latency text-to-speech (TTS) services, AI speech generation agents based on multiple languages and accents, real-time speech generation APIs, and on-premises deployment solutions. Customers can use their platform to quickly create, clone, and manage "natural-human-level" digital voices for scenarios such as content dubbing, customer service, wearable devices, virtual characters, etc. PlayAI is essentially a platform developer based on end-to-end voice AI, with its core value being the packaging of high-quality, low-latency, multi-language natural synthesis voices, precise exchange of text languages, and programmable voice agent capabilities. PlayAI competes with mainstream solutions such as ElevenLabs and OpenAI TTS in terms of naturalness of voice tone, pauses, stress, and intonation control. In terms of business models, they offer SaaS platform subscription + API billing + private deployment licenses, covering creators to large enterprise clients. The acquisition of PlayAI comes shortly after Meta's nearly $15 billion acquisition of 49% stake in Scale AI. Since the beginning of this year, Facebook and Meta, the parent companies of Instagram, have not stopped their aggressive investments in AI, actively engaging in major AI-related acquisitions and poaching top talent from competitors like Alphabet Inc. Class C and OpenAI to form a "Super Intelligence Team." Meta's unprecedented wave of AI acquisitions also reminds investors of the company's early days (when it was known as "Facebook") when it rapidly acquired Instagram and WhatsApp during the global social media craze to suppress competitive forces. The acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago have proven Meta's keen investment strategy. For Meta, the core significance of swallowing the key force in the AI speech field, PlayAI, lies in further perfecting the end-to-end content loop from large language models to AI application software and multimodal interaction (voice, images, videos, etc.). For example, empowering Meta AI, Instagram Reels, Quest headsets, Ray-Ban AI smart glasses, and other products with voice creation and immersive interaction, deeply integrating with Meta's "AI Characters" project (DIGIHUMAN), providing more realistic multilingual voice output as well as low-latency TTS suitable for wearable and XR devices for offline voice experience requirements.