Mark Zuckerberg makes more high-profile hirings for Meta’s AI unit, hires founders and team behind AI startup Dreamer
Mark Zuckerberg‘s Meta Platforms has hired the founders and core team behind Dreamer, an artificial intelligence startup launched earlier this year to simplify the creation of personalized AI agents. The move is said to signal a high-profile homecoming for co-founder Hugo Barra, a former Meta executive and Google veteran, who will now join the company’s Superintelligence Labs group, MSL.The transition was detailed in an internal memo sent Monday, March 23, morning by Meta’s Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. Under Wang’s leadership, the new hires—including Barra, former Stripe CTO David Singleton, and former Google design lead Nicholas Jitkoff—will focus on developing autonomous bots capable of completing tasks on behalf of human users.While the specific financial terms of the deal remain confidential, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Dreamer’s backers will be repaid more than their original investment. The arrangement allows Dreamer to remain its own legal entity, though Meta has secured a non-exclusive license to utilize the startup’s underlying technology. Prior to this move, Dreamer had raised $56 million at a valuation of $500 million in 2024.In a post on LinkedIn, Singleton confirmed the agreement and noted that he had demonstrated the product to Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year. Singleton wrote that it was immediately clear that both he and Zuckerberg shared a vision for a future where billions of individuals possess the power to create software that improves their daily lives. He also expressed gratitude to Wang, who was an early investor in the startup.
David Singleton on joining Meta with Hugo Barra
Excited to announce that @hbarra, @alcor and I are joining Meta Superintelligence Labs with the entire @Dreamer team today. The last few months have been extraordinary: we built Dreamer, put the beta in the world just a month ago, and saw magic come to life for real people. Since then, thousands of people have used Dreamer to build personal, intelligent software with our Sidekick in the world’s newest and most popular programming language: English!They’re building and sharing agents to manage email, calendar, and to-do’s, create learning tools for their kids, learn new languages, plan trips with friends, become better cooks, help them with work, achieve their health goals, or simply to creatively express themselves—all sorts of surprising and uniquely personal needs. These are agents as unique as the people building them, because they’re built exactly the way each person wants them to be. We’ve captured some of our favorites at http://dreamer.com/community-letter.What matters most here isn’t the early momentum; it’s what Dreamer has enabled people to do. People are building things they’ve wanted for years. They’re solving real, important problems no traditional software company would ever prioritize, because they’re too niche, too bespoke, too personal. What company would ever build for an “n of 1”?Our bet from the beginning has been that software should be personal, malleable, and shaped by the person using it. The constraint was never people’s imagination. It was the fact that building software is out of reach for most people. This early chapter gives us conviction that the idea resonates, the need is real, and the moment is now.@alexandr_wang was helpful to us from the very beginning, and when we showed Dreamer to Mark Zuckerberg and @natfriedman earlier this year, it was clear right away that we share the same vision of the future: one where billions of people have the power to create software that makes their lives better. We’re thrilled to accelerate this mission by joining Meta Superintelligence Labs and licensing our technology to Meta.Deeply grateful to our investors @jillchase124 and @ninaachadjian for supporting our vision for a more personal, creative, and intelligent future for software. Thank you for the trust, the thought partnership, and for being in our corner at every step.To everyone in our community who built with us: thank you. You’ve taught us what’s possible, and you’re the proof this works. We’re so grateful, and we’re just getting started!
Meta’s big spending spree for Meta Superintelligence Lab
The acquisition of talent highlights Meta’s aggressive pursuit of AI infrastructure and expertise. During an earnings call in January, Zuckerberg noted that improvements to AI agents have been “quite profound,” citing their utility in internal engineering and coding tasks. Wang echoed this sentiment in his memo, stating that Meta’s conviction in agents is “stronger than ever” as the company looks to build “always-on” AI that integrates across various software surfaces and wearable devices.This move follows a string of significant investments by Meta in the agent space, including a $2 billion deal to acquire Manus last December and the more recent acquisition of Moltbook, a social network for AI agents. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the Dreamer arrangement. In June 2025, Meta invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI, and hired the startup’s CEO Alexandr Wang to help the company’s artificial intelligence efforts. A small part number of Scale AI employees also joined Meta as part of the agreement.
