Facebook owner buys British sound startup in metaverse push

META has acquired a UK startup that helps gadgets decipher sounds around them, amid Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to revive the struggling tech giant’s growth.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that Facebook and Instagram owner Meta has bought Audio Analytic, a Cambridge-based business building artificial intelligence-driven sound recognition software for smart homes, phones and headsets.

Audio Analytic’s team will join Meta’s Reality Labs Research division, which has spearheaded the company’s costly and speculative development of the metaverse – a virtual world that Mr Zuckerberg believes is the future of the internet.

The metaverse has been described as a kind of 3D internet, consisting of virtual reality technology, holograms and augmented reality. Mr Zuckerberg’s company has already spent more than $15bn on the technology, despite widespread scepticism. Meta has haemorrhaged hundreds of billions of dollars in value amid the push, with its share price down 73pc so far this year.

Its Reality Labs business has been working on audio research to make virtual sounds and speech more realistic.

Audio Analytic recently began promoting its work as part of the metaverse. A recent blogpost said: “A greater sense of hearing is critical to presence and synchronicity in the metaverse.”

Founded in 2010 by Chris Mitchell, Audio Analytics’ artificial intelligence technology was trained to recognise thousands of sounds, such as smoke alarms, dogs barking, windows breaking or babies crying.

The company’s website claims its technology can give machines the “most accurate, robust and compact sense of hearing on the planet”.