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Meta Reportedly Acquires AI Audio Startup WaveForms Amid Ongoing Talent War

Meta Reportedly Acquires AI Audio Startup WaveForms Amid Ongoing Talent War

As part of the acquisition, WaveForms founder Alexis Conneau and Coralie Lemaitre will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.

Written by Akash Dutta, Edited by Rohan Pal | Updated: 8 August 2025 17:02 IST

Meta Reportedly Acquires AI Audio Startup WaveForms Amid Ongoing Talent War

Photo Credit: Reuters

Last month, Meta reportedly acquired Play AI, a startup working with voice models

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Highlights

WaveForms AI was founded in December 2024
The AI startup specialises in detecting and replicating emotion in audio
It raised $40 million in funding earlier this year

Meta is reportedly continuing its recruitment offensive to build up its new artificial intelligence (AI) division Superintelligence Labs. As per the report, the Menlo Park-based tech giant's latest spoils of the war is WaveForms, an AI startup working with audio-focused models. While the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the co-founders of the company were reportedly hired by Meta. This comes just a month after the company reportedly acquired Play AI, another startup working in the AI audio space.

WaveForms Was Founded in December 2024

According to The Information, Meta has completed the acquisition process to purchase WaveForms, an audio large language model (LLM) research and product startup. On LinkedIn, the company says it is working to solve the Speech Turing Test and creating “Emotional General Intelligence.”

Notably, the Speech Turing Test is a variation of Alan Turing's original Turing Test that evaluates whether a listener can tell if a voice or speech is generated by a human or by AI. If the listener cannot confidently pick an option, the test is considered to be passed. It is considered one of the important benchmarks of voice-based AI.

This Former OpenAI CTO Withstood Meta’s Billion-Dollar Recruitment Blitz

The San Francisco-based AI startup was founded by ex-Meta and OpenAI researcher Alexis Conneau, and ex-Google advertising strategist Coralie Lemaitre in December 2024. Despite its short run, the company reportedly raised $40 million (roughly Rs. 350 crore) in funding earlier this year, in a round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

As per the report, both Conneau and Lemaitre will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs as part of the acquisition deal. The tech giant might also make use of the tech stack of WaveForms to develop its voice-focused AI products. Meta already owns Play AI, another voice AI startup it acquired last month.

The company's focus on targeting voice AI startups highlights its intention to fill a visible gap in Meta AI's capabilities. While the company is reportedly working on adding real-time two-way voice conversations with the chatbot, it remains significantly behind compared to competitors like OpenAI and Google, which have released natural sounding voice features within ChatGPT and Gemini, respectively.

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Further reading: Meta, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise

Akash Dutta Email Akash Dutta

Akash Dutta is a Chief Sub Editor at Gadgets 360. He is particularly interested in the social impact of technological developments and loves reading about emerging fields such as AI, metaverse, and fediverse. In his free time, he can be seen supporting his favourite football club - Chelsea, watching movies and anime, and sharing passionate opinions on food. More