Meta(META.US)Strengthens AI Agent Strategy: Hires Core Team from Startup Dreamer, Assembles Former Google and Stripe Executives

Tech Times reports that Meta Platforms (META.US) has hired the founder and team of AI startup Dreamer, which was established earlier this year to help people create their own AI agents. According to an internal memo, the Dreamer team (including co-founder Hugo Barra, who previously worked at Meta) will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, led by Chief AI Officer Wang. The new hires will work on AI agents and related projects at Meta.

Although the terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, a source familiar with the matter said that Dreamer’s investors will receive returns higher than their investment. The person also added that Dreamer remains an independent legal entity, and the agreement includes a non-exclusive license allowing Meta to use Dreamer’s technology. In 2024, Dreamer reportedly raised $56 million at a valuation of $500 million.

Dreamer co-founder David Singleton confirmed the deal on LinkedIn, thanking investor Wang for his support during the company’s founding. Singleton also mentioned that earlier this year, he showed Zuckerberg Dreamer’s product. “We quickly realized we share the same vision for the future: empowering billions of people to create software to improve their lives,” Singleton wrote.

AI agents, or autonomous robots capable of performing tasks on behalf of humans, have become a key focus for Meta. The company is heavily investing in AI talent and infrastructure. Zuckerberg stated during Meta’s January earnings call that improvements in AI agents are “quite significant,” and engineers are using them to assist with coding and other tasks. Wang also discussed AI agents earlier this year in an interview in India, saying they “offer a more powerful AI version to everyone in the world, which is a great opportunity to achieve this goal.”

In his Monday announcement about new hires, Wang wrote, “Our confidence in intelligent agents is stronger than ever.” Meta is “building truly personalized and always-on intelligent agents that can be integrated across platforms and wearables.”

In December last year, Meta agreed to acquire popular AI agent company Manus for over $2 billion, planning to deploy its technology across various Meta applications and services for enterprise use. Earlier this month, Meta announced it would acquire social AI agent network Moltbook.

Dreamer was founded by a team of seasoned tech industry veterans, including Singleton, who served as CTO of fintech company Stripe and VP of engineering for Google’s Android products. Barra also previously served as VP of Android product management at Google before joining Meta from Xiaomi, where he led the virtual reality division. He left Meta in 2021. Dreamer’s Chief Design Officer Nicholas Jitkoff was the lead designer for Google Chrome OS. According to Wang’s post, these three will join Meta.