The 8-month-old startup teaching machines to sound human — now a part of Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.
On August 8, 2025, Meta announced it had acquired expressive AI speech startup, WaveForm, with founders Alexis Conneau and Lemaitre joining their already talent-stacked Superintelligence Labs team.
But Who Are WaveForms?
WaveForms is an AI startup specialising in expressive voice and AI audio. Their core aim is to make machine-generated speech that’s impossible to distinguish from reality. Not just in clarity, but in emotion:
- Real life pacing, rhythm, and accents.
- Expressive breathing between words.
- And pausing in the right places.
The Details
PitchBook data cited that WaveForms’ last raise at $40 million was led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the business around $160 million.
The price Meta has paid remains undisclosed. But the direction is obvious: Meta is moving aggressively toward Integration of speech into their wearables and content tools, such as Meta assistant.
Think of WhatsApp reading messages in a tone that matches the urgency, or a wearable that slows its coaching voice the moment your breathing spikes.
It then becomes easier to understand why Meta is moving so aggressively. Adding WaveForms to the list of voice-focused acquisitions they’ve made, alongside Play AI.
And with WaveForm’s expressive speech, soon Meta won’t just create a voice you can hear, but a tone you can feel.
