Meta Platforms Inc. brought back former executive Hugo Barra this week as part of its acquisition of AI startup Dreamer, marking the tech giant’s latest move to accelerate its artificial intelligence efforts . The deal, announced March 23, brings Barra back to the company he left in 2021, along with Dreamer co-founders David Singleton, formerly Stripe’s CTO, and Nicholas Jitkoff, formerly a senior design director at Figma .
The Dreamer team is joining Meta’s Superintelligence Labs group under Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang , according to internal company communications reviewed by Bloomberg. Unlike a traditional acquisition, Meta hired Dreamer staff through a licensing arrangement for the company’s AI technology, while Dreamer remains a separate legal entity . Terms were not disclosed, though Dreamer backers will be paid back more than their investment .
Dreamer launched in beta last month with what Barra described as a “new operating system for AI agents and agentic apps” . The startup had raised $56 million at a $500 million valuation in November 2024 . In a LinkedIn post, Singleton said when Dreamer showed its technology to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year, “it was clear right away that we share the same vision of the future” where “billions of people have the power to create software that makes their lives better” .
The acquisition follows Meta’s $2 billion purchase of AI agent company Manus in December and its March acquisition of AI agent-focused social platform Moltbook . Meta is planning up to $135 billion in capital expenditures this year, mostly tied to AI infrastructure, as it competes with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google .