Pocket FM taps former Meta AI scientist Vasu Sharma to lead AI push
Sharma will lead Pocket FM’s AI research, foundation-model development and applied innovation across storytelling, content production and localisation. He will report to co-founder Prateek Dixit.
- Jan 21, 2026,
- Updated Jan 21, 2026 6:46 PM IST
Pocket FM has appointed former Meta Platforms artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Vasu Sharma as its head of AI, as the audio-series platform accelerates its push to build what it calls a global AI-powered entertainment ecosystem.
Sharma, who previously worked at Meta’s Facebook AI Research (FAIR) division, will lead Pocket FM’s AI research, foundation-model development and applied innovation across storytelling, content production and localisation. He will report to co-founder Prateek Dixit, the company said on January 21.
The hire comes as Pocket FM ramps up investments in AI to automate and scale story creation, adaptation and distribution across languages and markets. The company is positioning itself as an “AI-first entertainment company” combining human writers with large language models and multimodal AI systems.
At Meta, Sharma worked on several flagship AI programmes, including the Llama family of large language models (LLMs), Chameleon, MaVIL and next-generation audio-video foundation models.
“Pocket FM sits at a rare intersection of AI, creativity and global storytelling,” Sharma said in a statement. “With a clear vision to build the world’s best AI-powered fiction writing model, the opportunity to develop fiction-native systems and creator-centric AI tools is incredibly exciting.”
Sharma’s mandate includes advancing Pocket FM’s proprietary LLMs, known internally as Pocket LLMs, and expanding its AI CoPilot platform, which helps writers with story ideation, drafting, plot design, editing, emotional toning and multi-language adaptation.
The company is betting that AI can significantly reduce production costs and speed up the creation of long-form, episodic audio content, while helping localise popular stories for global audiences.
“Vasu brings world-class AI research experience, and his expertise in multimodal and long-form language models will significantly accelerate our creator-first AI vision,” Dixit said.
Founded in India, Pocket FM operates one of the world’s largest audio-series platforms, with more than 250 million listeners globally. The company has built a creator ecosystem of over 300,000 writers and a catalogue of more than 100,000 audio series, spanning romance, thriller, fantasy and drama genres.
Pocket FM has been expanding aggressively in international markets, including the US and Europe, as it looks to build a global intellectual-property pipeline powered by AI-assisted storytelling.
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Pocket FM has appointed former Meta Platforms artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Vasu Sharma as its head of AI, as the audio-series platform accelerates its push to build what it calls a global AI-powered entertainment ecosystem.
Sharma, who previously worked at Meta’s Facebook AI Research (FAIR) division, will lead Pocket FM’s AI research, foundation-model development and applied innovation across storytelling, content production and localisation. He will report to co-founder Prateek Dixit, the company said on January 21.
The hire comes as Pocket FM ramps up investments in AI to automate and scale story creation, adaptation and distribution across languages and markets. The company is positioning itself as an “AI-first entertainment company” combining human writers with large language models and multimodal AI systems.
At Meta, Sharma worked on several flagship AI programmes, including the Llama family of large language models (LLMs), Chameleon, MaVIL and next-generation audio-video foundation models.
“Pocket FM sits at a rare intersection of AI, creativity and global storytelling,” Sharma said in a statement. “With a clear vision to build the world’s best AI-powered fiction writing model, the opportunity to develop fiction-native systems and creator-centric AI tools is incredibly exciting.”
Sharma’s mandate includes advancing Pocket FM’s proprietary LLMs, known internally as Pocket LLMs, and expanding its AI CoPilot platform, which helps writers with story ideation, drafting, plot design, editing, emotional toning and multi-language adaptation.
The company is betting that AI can significantly reduce production costs and speed up the creation of long-form, episodic audio content, while helping localise popular stories for global audiences.
“Vasu brings world-class AI research experience, and his expertise in multimodal and long-form language models will significantly accelerate our creator-first AI vision,” Dixit said.
Founded in India, Pocket FM operates one of the world’s largest audio-series platforms, with more than 250 million listeners globally. The company has built a creator ecosystem of over 300,000 writers and a catalogue of more than 100,000 audio series, spanning romance, thriller, fantasy and drama genres.
Pocket FM has been expanding aggressively in international markets, including the US and Europe, as it looks to build a global intellectual-property pipeline powered by AI-assisted storytelling.
For Unparalleled coverage of India's Businesses and Economy – Subscribe to Business Today Magazine