Meta Platforms has recruited the founders and core team of artificial intelligence startup Dreamer, a company established earlier this year with the goal of enabling people to create their own AI agents. According to an internal announcement, the Dreamer team, including co-founder and former Meta employee Hugo Barra, will join the Meta Superintelligence Labs, reporting to the Chief AI Officer. The new hires will focus on research and development for AI agents and related projects at Meta. While the terms of the agreement were not disclosed, a person familiar with the matter indicated that Dreamer's investors will receive a return exceeding their initial investment. The source also noted that Dreamer will maintain its status as an independent legal entity, and the agreement includes a non-exclusive license granting Meta the right to use Dreamer's technology. A 2024 report stated that Dreamer had previously raised $56 million at a valuation of $500 million. Dreamer co-founder David Singleton confirmed the transaction in a LinkedIn post, expressing gratitude to the company's investors for their support during its formation. Singleton added that he demonstrated Dreamer's product to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year. "We quickly discovered we share the same vision for the future: empowering billions of people with the ability to create software to improve their lives," Singleton wrote. AI agents, which are autonomous systems capable of performing tasks on behalf of humans, have become a major strategic focus for Meta. The company is making significant investments in AI talent and infrastructure. During Meta's earnings call in January, Zuckerberg stated that improvements in AI agents have been "quite significant," with company engineers already utilizing them to assist with coding and other tasks. In an interview in India earlier this year, the Chief AI Officer also discussed AI agents, describing them as a "great opportunity to provide a more powerful version of AI for everyone in the world." In a statement announcing the new hires, the executive wrote, "Our conviction in agents is stronger than ever," adding that Meta is "building truly personalized, always-on agents that can be integrated across platforms and wearable devices." Last December, Meta agreed to acquire the popular AI agent company Manus for over $2 billion, planning to deploy it for businesses using Meta's suite of apps and services. Earlier this month, Meta also announced its intention to acquire the AI agent social network Moltbook. Dreamer was founded by a group of technology industry veterans, including Singleton, the former Chief Technology Officer of fintech firm Stripe and a former Vice President of Engineering for Google's Android products. Barra, who previously served as Vice President of Product Management for Android at Google, joined Meta from Xiaomi to lead the company's virtual reality division before departing in 2021. Dreamer's Chief Design Officer, Nicholas Jitkoff, was formerly the lead designer for Google's Chrome OS. According to the announcement, all three executives will join Meta.
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