Technology giants' "talent war" intensifies! Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) and Meta (META.US) both made moves on the same day to expand their AI footprint.

On Friday, July 11th, the market successively received news that tech giants Meta and Alphabet Inc. Class C have both completed acquisition transactions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), expanding their footprint in the respective area. As for Meta (META.US), the company has completed the acquisition of AI voice startup PlayAI. Reports citing internal memorandums indicate that the PlayAI team will join Meta next week, with the new members reporting to Meta executive Johan Schalkwyk. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the acquisition of PlayAI to the media, but did not disclose specific financial terms. Not long ago, Schalkwyk moved from another voice AI startup called "Sesame AI" to Meta. Financial Associated Press reported two weeks ago that Meta had entered into deep negotiations with PlayAI. At that time, Meta was expected to acquire PlayAI's technology assets and absorb some of its employees. According to the PlayAI website blog, PlayAI focuses on developing voice interaction features that make AI "naturally respond like a conversation between people." In the memorandum, Meta stated, "PlayAI's work and roadmap in AI roles, Meta AI, wearable devices, and audio content creation are very compatible with ours." On the same day, Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) acquired the core talent and relevant licensed assets of AI programming startup Windsurf for approximately $2.4 billion. Previously, there were reports that OpenAI planned to acquire Windsurf for $3 billion, but it fell through. According to the statement, Alphabet Inc. Class C will hire Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some employees to join its AI division DeepMind. Sources revealed that one reason for the breakdown of the agreement between Windsurf and OpenAI was that Windsurf was unwilling to allow Microsoft Corporation access to its intellectual property. (Microsoft Corporation is a significant investor in OpenAI). The existing agreement between Microsoft Corporation and OpenAI allows Microsoft Corporation to use OpenAI's related technology, which also affected OpenAI's process of restructuring itself as a commercial entity. Recently, large tech companies have been frequently using "quasi-acquisitions" - not directly acquiring equity to avoid antitrust scrutiny - to compete for core AI technology and talent. Last year, Microsoft Corporation hired the founder and most of the employees of Inflection AI, and obtained the AI software license of the company; Amazon.com, Inc. also absorbed executives and employees from Adept AI Labs in a similar manner; Alphabet Inc. Class C reached an agreement with Character.AI. Not long ago, Meta acquired a 49% stake in AI data annotation company Scale AI for over $14 billion, and Zuckerberg also hired the co-founder of Scale AI to build his "superintelligence" team. This article is sourced from "Financial Associated Press," authored by Zhao Hao, and edited by GMTEight: Chen Qiuda.