Meta has hired the entire founding team of Dreamer, an artificial intelligence startup that set out to let ordinary people build their own AI agents, slotting them into its newly formed Superintelligence Labs unit as the company deepens its pursuit of autonomous AI systems.
The move was confirmed in an internal post sent by Meta's chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, on Monday morning, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. All three co-founders will join the Superintelligence Labs division under Wang.
David Singleton, Dreamer's chief executive, was formerly chief technology officer at Stripe and before that a vice president of engineering on Google's Android product. Hugo Barra, the co-founder whose return to Meta is likely to attract the most attention, previously led the company's virtual reality division after stints at Google and Xiaomi, departing in 2021.
The third co-founder, Nicholas Jitkoff, served as a leading designer on Google's Chrome OS.
While the financial terms were not disclosed, Dreamer's backers will be paid back more than their original investment, according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported.
Dreamer will remain a standalone legal entity, with Meta receiving a non-exclusive licence to use the startup's technology rather than absorbing it outright — a structure sometimes described in the industry as an acqui-hire.
Dreamer had raised $56 million at a valuation of $500 million in late 2024. Wang was personally among the investors in that round, suggesting Meta's AI chief had been cultivating the relationship well before this week's announcement.
Singleton confirmed the deal in a LinkedIn post, saying he had shown Zuckerberg the product earlier this year.
The hire is the third significant AI talent move Meta has made in rapid succession. The company agreed to spend more than $2 billion to acquire Manus, an AI agent startup, last December, and announced plans to acquire Moltbook, described as a social network for AI agents, earlier this month.
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Wang told staff that Meta's "conviction in agents is stronger than ever." AI agents, systems capable of carrying out multi-step tasks with limited human supervision, have become central to the company's ambitions. Zuckerberg said earlier this year that improvements to agent technology had been "quite profound."
Meta has said it plans to spend up to $135 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, a significant portion of which is directed at AI infrastructure and research. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the Dreamer deal.
The recap
- Meta hires Dreamer founders and team to join Superintelligence Labs
- Dreamer launched earlier this year to build AI agents
- New hires will work on AI agents and associated projects
