Meta acquires WaveForms AI, the voice startup of ex-OpenAI GPT-4o voice lead Alexis Conneau
Confirmed
The takeaway
On 2025-08-08 Meta acquired WaveForms AI, a speech startup founded in 2024 by Alexis Conneau (who worked on GPT-4o’s Advanced Voice Mode at OpenAI) and Coralie Lemaitre.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 2 of 5
- Last verified
- 29 September 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 AstraIn its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5In its training data
- Gemini 4 HydrogenIn its training data
- Grok 4.7In its training data
It happened before the cutoffs of all four assistants, so it can be in their training data.
Key facts
- Reported by The Information on 2025-08-08; confirmed to TechCrunch; price not disclosed
- WaveForms raised $40M (Andreessen Horowitz-backed) at a $200M valuation (Dec 2024)
- Founders Alexis Conneau (ex-OpenAI GPT-4o/Advanced Voice Mode, ex-Meta FAIR) and Coralie Lemaitre joined Meta Superintelligence Labs
- Part of Meta’s summer-2025 MSL talent push; Meta had bought voice startup PlayAI in July 2025
- Sept 2026: Conneau, now a Meta Distinguished Scientist, introduced Muse Realtime Avatar (~870 ms latency), built on Muse Realtime Voice
What happened
Meta bought a months-old voice startup mainly for its team. Conneau had helped build GPT-4o’s native voice mode at OpenAI, so the deal brought OpenAI voice experience into Meta’s new superintelligence lab.
Why it matters
It is the origin of Meta’s 2026 realtime voice and avatar models (Muse Realtime Voice / Avatar). It was also part of the 2025 wave of acqui-hires in which frontier labs bought small teams instead of licensing their technology.
Sources
4 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
4 sources: 1 primary, 3 press
Primary
Press
- TechCrunch - Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveFormstechcrunch.com, press
- SiliconANGLE - Meta reportedly acquires voice AI startup WaveFormssiliconangle.com, press
- Latent Space AINews - Meta Connect 2026 (WaveForms work surfaced at Connect)latent.space, press
Changes
- Filed