Google Deepmind hires CEO, top engineers from voice AI startup Hume AI
23 Jan 2026, 01:09 PMAs part of the deal, Hume AI’s CEO, Alan Cowen, and some of its leading engineers will join Google DeepMind.
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Google Deepmind has hired the team behind voice AI startup Hume AI, the Wired reported.
As part of the deal, Hume AI’s CEO, Alan Cowen, and some of its leading engineers will join Google DeepMind. The engineers will work to improve Google's Gemini’s voice features.
Meanwhile, Hume AI will continue to supply its tech services to other firms.
Hume AI, which was founded in 2021 by Cowen, formerly a researcher at Google Deepmind, is a start up working on emotionally intelligent voice interfaces. Hume AI’s competitive edge is its Empathetic Voice Interface, which interprets a user’s mood through vocal cues. The voice AI startup had last raised $50 million in its Series B funding round in 2024.
Last year in July, Google had acquired the AI coding startup Windsurf’s CEO and other researchers in a $2.4 billion licensing deal.
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