Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveForms

Meta has acquired AI voice startup WaveForms for an undisclosed sum, The Information reports. It’s the company’s latest buy to strengthen its new AI unit, Superintelligence Labs, and Meta’s second major AI audio acquisition in the last month after it bought PlayAI. 

WaveForms, founded just eight months ago, raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz in a round that valued the company at $160 million pre-money, per PitchBook data. 

Two of the startup’s co-founders – former Meta and OpenAI researcher Alexis Conneau, and former Google advertising strategist Coralie Lemaitre – have reportedly joined Meta. While at OpenAI, Conneau co-created GPT4-o Advanced Voice Mode neural networks. 

TechCrunch has reached out to WaveForms to find out if its third co-founder and chief technologist, Kartikay Khandelwal, will also join Meta, as well as the outcome of the deal for the roughly 14 other staffers (per LinkedIn) at the company.

WaveForms appears to have taken down its own website, but the company’s LinkedIn page describes its mission as solving the “Speech Turing Test,” which tries to measure if a listener can distinguish between human and AI-generated speech. WaveForms was also developing “Emotional General Intelligence,” which focuses on understanding individual self-awareness and management.