Meta is spending wildly, and the pace of AI cannot be stopped. It plans to acquire the AI voice startup PlayAI

According to media reports citing informed sources, Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms (META.US) is in acquisition talks with AI startup PlayAI, which focuses on artificial intelligence voice technology. According to media reports on Thursday Eastern Time, this California-based startup specializes in generating extremely high-quality AI voice output that closely resembles human speech using AI technology. The Meta AI team is expected to take over all of the startup's technology and absorb some of its employees, aiming to secure as many top talents in the global AI field as possible.

Informed sources told the media that the acquisition deal has not yet been finalized, and the final outcome and details may still change. Specific financial terms have not been disclosed.

This move comes shortly after Meta spent nearly $15 billion to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI and poached the company's CEO Alexandr Wang to lead Meta's new "super intelligence" division. This deal could reshape the competitive landscape in the AI data labeling field and highlights Meta's strategy of accelerating its AI layout through massive investments in the AI application software race. Under Mark Zuckerberg's leadership, Meta seems very committed to the substantial investment model of "spending money to create miracles" in the field of artificial intelligence technology.

Since the beginning of this year, Facebook and Instagram's parent company Meta has been actively negotiating significant mergers and acquisitions related to AI, and has recruited top talents from competitors like Google's parent company Alphabet (GOOGL.US) and OpenAI to form a "super intelligence team." According to media reports, Zuckerberg has hired three OpenAI researchers to join his "super intelligence" team. Just a few days ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused the Facebook boss of trying to poach his employees.

Before acquiring Scale AI, Meta also attempted to acquire top global AI startups focused on cutting-edge AI applications, such as Perplexity AI, Runway AI, and FuriosaAI.

The unprecedented AI acquisition frenzy initiated by Meta has also reminded investors of the company's earlier aggressive practices when it was still called "Facebook," rapidly acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp to suppress competition during the global social media wave.

Geneva Investor, an analyst stationed at the investment research platform Seeking Alpha, recently stated that Meta's massive investment in AI startup Scale AI could significantly enhance its exposure to AI-related businesses and bring a "positive catalyst" for the stock price of this tech giant led by Mark Zuckerberg to enter a long bull market.

The acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago has already proven Meta's keen investment insight. Jonathan Weber, an opinion leader in the investment community Cash Flow Club, stated: "The management has performed excellently in identifying and investing in quality targets, including the acquisition of Instagram over a decade ago." Therefore, I believe the risk of excessive premiums is not significant.

For Meta, in the context of global companies vying for dominance in AI applications, Scale AI may help Meta create "killer" AI applications. As a leader in global data annotation and model evaluation, Scale AI holds the "data means of production" in the AI era. Scale AI can provide an industry-leading data annotation and model evaluation platform, while Meta is eager to commercialize the Llama series of large models on a large scale and deeply integrate Meta AI into its social, advertising, and hardware ecosystem. Scale AI can be seen as the final key piece of Meta's "AI moat": the integration of computing power (NVIDIA AI GPU + self-developed ASIC + large-scale data centers covering the globe), large models (Llama family), and data (Scale AI)