companies

PlayHT

AI voice generation and text-to-speech platform; acquired by Meta in 2025 and shut down December 31, 2025.

PlayHT (later rebranded PlayAI) was founded in 2016 by Mahmoud Felfel and Hammad Syed, based in Palo Alto, California. The company built a generative voice AI platform offering text-to-speech models and voice agents that generated human-like AI voices for deployment across web, phone, and app products, and went through Y Combinator. It raised roughly $21.75M in total funding from investors including Meta, 500 Global, Pioneer Fund, and Race Capital. In July 2025, PlayAI was acquired by Meta, with its roughly 35-person team joining Meta's Superintelligence Labs division to work on Meta AI, AI Characters, and wearable voice products. Meta shut the standalone play.ht service down on December 31, 2025, deleting user accounts, saved projects, generated audio, and voice clones; the domain no longer resolves to an active product as of 2026.

Founded

2016

Headquarters

Palo Alto, United States

Sector

applications