Meta Platforms has purchased artificial intelligence voice technology startup PlayAI for an undisclosed sum. The entire PlayAI staff will segue to Meta this month, reporting to Johan Schalkwyk, who was recently hired by the social giant from another voice startup, Sesame AI. Co-founded at Y Combinator by Mahmoud Felfel and Hammad Syed, PlayAI launched with a Chrome plugin that delivered audio versions of printed articles, later evolving into a broader AI voice platform. The main product, the Play 3.0 model, supports more than 30 languages and enables the quick creation of voice agents for things like sales and customer support. Continue reading Meta Platforms Acquires Real-Time Voice Tech Startup PlayAI

New Jersey-based cloud-computing startup CoreWeave has reached an agreement to acquire crypto miner Core Scientific in a vertical integration move that will see the AI infrastructure provider gain access to more than 1 gigawatt of U.S. data center capacity with an incremental 1 gigawatt of power available for expansion. The all-stock transaction, valued at $9 billion, is expected to close in Q4 pending regulatory approval. According to CoreWeave, the purchase will eliminate some $10 billion in upcoming lease fees, saving around $500 million annually starting in 2027 and helping to “future-proof” the company. Continue reading AI Provider CoreWeave to Acquire Core Scientific for $9 Billion

Grammarly — maker of the popular AI productivity tool — says it will acquire Superhuman, an AI-native email app that helps users save time on electronic communications. The purchase price was not disclosed. The acquisition aims to accelerate Grammarly’s evolution into an all-around AI productivity assistant that does more than improve syntax and offers a full complement of apps and agents. The San Francisco-based company, which launched in 2009, last year acquired Coda and its suite of document and spreadsheet software. Grammarly says it now has “an ‘AI superhighway’ that delivers writing agents to users across more than 500,000 applications and websites.” Continue reading Grammarly to Expand Productivity with Superhuman Purchase

Semiconductor giant Qualcomm is seeking to expand its AI tech portfolio with an agreement to purchase custom silicon firm Alphawave IP Group (“Alphawave Semi”) in a deal valued at roughly $2.4 billion. UK-based Alphawave makes chips used in artificial intelligence and data centers. The deal follows months of talks between the San Diego-based Qualcomm and Alphawave, which was identified as an acquisition target in April. “AI inferencing growth is driving demand for Qualcomm’s high-performance energy-efficient compute solutions and this acquisition provides key assets for our expansion into data centers,” Qualcomm explained in disclosing the deal. Continue reading Qualcomm Strikes Deal to Acquire Alphawave for $2.4 Billion

Determined to rebound from the Llama 4 Behemoth delay, Meta Platforms is swinging for the fences in its artificial intelligence efforts, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally supervising creation of a new AI lab focused on superintelligence. Meta has reportedly reached a deal to pay up to $15 billion for a stake in a startup called Scale AI that would bring its 28-year-old co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang in-house to lead the effort. Other leading Scale AI staff would also come aboard, and Meta is said to be recruiting researchers from OpenAI and Google by dangling “seven- to nine-figure compensation packages,” reports indicate. Continue reading Meta Said to Be Planning Major Push into AI Superintelligence

Apple is acquiring its first game studio — Vancouver-based RAC7, a two-person company best known for Apple Arcade’s breakout hit “Sneaky Sasquatch.” While Apple is couching the move as an exception rather than a calculated expansion into gaming, the lack of exclusive Apple Vision Pro gaming IP could be considered a disadvantage against competing platforms. In January, Nvidia announced that its GeForce NOW cloud gaming platform added support for more than 2,000 visionOS-compatible titles accessible through Apple’s Safari browser for 4K streaming at 120 fps. Continue reading Apple Buys into Game Industry with Purchase of RAC7 Studio

Salesforce has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AI-powered cloud data management Informatica for $8 billion. The move will boost Salesforce’s presence in the enterprise space, combining two large, established software firms. Salesforce says the move will enhance its ability to deliver agentic AI via “Informatica’s rich data catalog, data integration, governance, quality and privacy, metadata management, and Master Data Management (MDM) services.” Informatica will help the Salesforce platform establish “a unified architecture for agentic AI — enabling AI agents to operate safely, responsibly, and at scale across the modern enterprise,” according to Salesforce. Continue reading Salesforce Agrees to Buy Data Firm Informatica for $8 Billion

Florida-based Infinite Reality, the metaverse startup that acquired music service Napster in March for $207 million, has rebranded itself as Napster Corp. and launched a division called Napster AI that plans to foster fan interactivity and virtual experiences through its AI products and services, starting with the beta release of Napster Spaces. The new division leverages agentic AI tech of a company called Touchcast that Infinite Reality acquired last month for $500 million. Its flagship product, Mentor, “is a complete AI learning and development department at a click of a button.” Built using OpenAI models and delivered on enterprise-grade Azure, Mentor was introduced in November at Microsoft Ignite. Continue reading Infinite Reality Rebrands as Napster and Launches Agentic AI

Two years after entering into a collaboration to develop an AI device to succeed the smartphone, OpenAI has agreed to purchase io, Jony Ive’s device and design startup. The $6.4 billion all-stock deal will bring OpenAI to the hardware business and possibly foster the next steps toward ambient computing. “The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco,” OpenAI announced, adding that Ive will assume “deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io.” Continue reading OpenAI Acquiring Jony Ive’s io in a Deal Valued at $6.4 Billion

Just prior to the start of the weekend, Elon Musk announced that his artificial intelligence company xAI is acquiring his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) “in an all-stock transaction,” valuing xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion in debt). The merger has the potential to create a powerful GenAI-powered content platform. The billionaire purchased Twitter in late 2022 for $44 billion, following months of legal skirmishes. According to Musk, X currently touts more than 600 million active users, while “xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale.” Continue reading Elon Musk Announces xAI Corporation Will Purchase X Social

Tech firm Infinite Reality — which specializes in AI-powered 3D immersive experiences — has agreed to pay $207 million for Napster, the 26-year-old music streaming service. The sellers are crypto investment firm Hivemind Capital Partners and blockchain firm Algorand, that acquired the platform in 2022. Infinite Reality is privately held, listing among its investors Liberty Media, Live Nation, MGM, T-Mobile and Barry Diller’s IAC. The company plans to steer Napster to superfan experiences, making it “more immersive, more social, and more shoppable.” Napster CEO Jon Vlassopulos, former global music chief at Roblox, will continue in his current post. Continue reading Infinite Reality Agrees to Acquire Napster in $207 Million Deal

Japanese tech investment firm Softbank has agreed to acquire Silicon Valley chip startup Ampere for $6.5 billion, indicating that technology originating in smartphones will eventually become integral to global data centers and the future of artificial intelligence. The eight-year-old Ampere sells chips based on Arm technology, the processor type used in virtually all mobile phones. SoftBank purchased Arm in 2016 and has since been working to ensure the technology becomes used more broadly. Softbank says it will allow Ampere to retain its own name, operating it as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Continue reading Softbank Agrees to Acquire Chipmaker Ampere for $6.5 Billion

Google has acquired Wiz, a multi-cloud security firm that will remain cloud-agnostic under its new ownership. In fact, the ability to expand its customer base to companies that use competing cloud services like AWS or Azure was a key incentive for Google to buy the five-year-old startup, whose mandate is “to help every organization secure everything they build and run in the cloud — any cloud.” Google agreed to pay $32 billion for the New York-based firm, which had annual revenue of $700 million last year and was on track to increase that to $1 billion in 2025. Wiz, which had been considering an IPO, was most recently valued at $12 billion. Continue reading Google Agrees to Buy Cybersecurity Startup Wiz for $32 Billion

Elon Musk’s xAI has acquired generative video startup Hotshot to bring motion imaging to Grok 3. Released in February, Grok 3 adds Deep Search and Thinking and improved on its predecessor’s still imaging capabilities, but lacks generative video, a much-requested feature — one that could make Grok a freestanding competitor to OpenAI’s individual offerings: ChatGPT for text, Sora for video, and DALL-E for images. “Cool AI video coming soon!” was Musk’s comment to Hotshot’s acquisition announcement on the networking platform. Hotshot can generate clips of up to 10-seconds at 1280×720 pixels. Continue reading With Hotshot Purchase, xAI to Bring Generative Video to Grok

Digg, a link-based aggregator website that was an Internet staple circa 2012 then faded, has been acquired by founder Kevin Rose in partnership with Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit. The site gained popularity by tapping crowdsourced voting, allowing users to vote content up or down. Thanks to AI, the duo feel the timing is right for Digg to make a comeback. “We’ve hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it, allowing users to dig deeper, while removing repetitive burdens,” Rose says. Continue reading Crowdsourced Social Site Digg to Relaunch after AI Makeover