Meta Platform reported another strong quarter, with profit up 36 percent to $18 billion on revenue of $47.5 billion, a 22 percent increase. Justifying to investors why the company spent billions restructuring AI operations as part of the new AI Superintelligence Lab and recruiting talent to run it, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized his desire “to build personal superintelligence for everyone in the world.” Zuckerberg said he believes AI superintelligence “has the potential to begin an exciting new era of individual empowerment.” Meta plans to more than double spending to build AI infrastructure, including server-filled data centers, and initiatives supporting model training and cloud computing. Continue reading Meta Profit Is Up 36 Percent, Fueling Superintelligence Race

Meta Platforms has embarked on an ambitious data center build-out to power its AI ambitions. This includes Hyperion, a massive facility to be built in Louisiana that “will be able to scale up to 5 gigawatts over several years,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads with a graphic illustrating how its planned footprint is nearly big enough to cover most of Manhattan. The first new plant to come online will be Prometheus in Ohio in 2026, Zuckerberg said, indicating his company will not be looking to OpenAI and Stargate partners to power Meta AI processing. Continue reading Meta Power Play Includes Data Centers of Up to 5 Gigawatts

Underscoring its commitment to smart glasses, Meta Platforms has reportedly invested $3.5 billion in EssilorLuxottica SA, the world’s largest manufacturer of eyewear. The move gives Meta around a three percent stake in the Paris-headquartered firm, and expands an existing relationship for brand deals that resulted in the casual Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses released in 2021 and an athlete-focused Oakley Meta HSTN AI line announced last month. Neither Meta nor EssilorLuxottica has publicly commented on the equity buy-in yet, though it has been reported Meta may increase its stake to five percent. Continue reading Meta Investing $3.5B in Smart Glass Partner EssilorLuxottica

Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) is the name of the new AI unit for which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively recruiting. The division will be led by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who joined last month after Zuckerberg paid an estimated $15 billion for Scale AI, where Wang was CEO and co-founder. Nat Friedman, who ran GitHub for Microsoft from 2018 to 2021, will “partner with Alex to lead MSL” heading products and applied research, Zuckerberg said in an internal memo. The new group will encompass Meta’s AI foundations, product and FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) teams as well as the lab for next generation models. Continue reading Meta Bows Superintelligence Labs, Continues AI Recruitment

Meta Platforms is opening its WhatsApp messaging service to advertising. The company revealed that three ad modules will roll out gradually. The ads will be positioned under WhatsApp’s Updates tab, a section discreet from WhatsApp’s users’ message inboxes and private chats. The Updates tab is also the entry point to WhatsApp’s Status feature, which lets users share photos, videos and text that disappear after 24 hours, similar to Instagram Stories. Meta says the Updates tab gets 1.5 billion visitors per day. The company is also seeking to monetize WhatsApp’s Channels feature by offering paid subscriptions and promoted Channels. Continue reading Meta Platforms Is Gradually Bringing Advertising to WhatsApp

Determined to rebound from the Llama 4 Behemoth delay, Meta Platforms is swinging for the fences in its artificial intelligence efforts, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally supervising creation of a new AI lab focused on superintelligence. Meta has reportedly reached a deal to pay up to $15 billion for a stake in a startup called Scale AI that would bring its 28-year-old co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang in-house to lead the effort. Other leading Scale AI staff would also come aboard, and Meta is said to be recruiting researchers from OpenAI and Google by dangling “seven- to nine-figure compensation packages,” reports indicate. Continue reading Meta Said to Be Planning Major Push into AI Superintelligence

Meta Platforms has restructured its artificial intelligence operations, creating two separate units — an AI Products team headed by Connor Hayes and the AGI Foundations unit jointly run by Ahmad Al-Dahle and Amir Frenkel. The move comes as Meta is delayed getting its latest foundation model Llama 4 Behemoth to market and has also seen several key AI engineers depart. The idea is that dividing a single large organization into two smaller divisions will speed product development and add flexibility as Meta faces tough competition from top companies such as Google and OpenAI, as well as social companies X and TikTok. Continue reading Meta Restructures AI Ops in Wake of Llama 4 Behemoth Delay

Meta Platforms revenue for Q1 was $42.3 billion, up 16 percent year-over-year and besting Wall Street estimates of $41.3 billion. Profits were up 35 percent to $16.6 billion, hurtling past analyst estimates of $13.6 billion. Advertising, up nearly 15 percent for the quarter compared to last year, comfortably passed $41 billion, driving the revenue performance. Meta began Q2 by launching its anticipated standalone Meta AI app. Built with natively multimodal Llama 4 models, the company is positioning the Meta AI app as “a personal AI designed around voice conversations,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Continue reading Meta Touts 35 Percent Q1 Profit Jump, ‘Personalized’ AI App

After testing advertising in select markets, Meta Platforms is now offering ads on Instagram’s Threads globally to all eligible advertisers, providing access to the more than 320 million monthly active users the social platform has accrued since launching in July 2023. The Threads feed ad placement will be set on by default for new campaigns using either Advantage+ or Manual Placements unless an advertiser toggles to opt out. Global Threads advertisers will also have access to the platform’s inventory filter, which provides increased control over the distribution of ads. Continue reading Meta Opens Threads Advertising Globally to Eligible Accounts

Utah has become the first state to make app stores responsible for verifying users’ ages. The Utah App Store Accountability Act shifts the burden of proving one’s age from social platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and X to digital storefronts, namely Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Those who create accounts in the state will have to prove they’re over 18 or, if underage, link their account to a parent or guardian’s. Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed the bill into law on Wednesday and it begins taking effect May 7. Google opposed the legislation and lobbied the governor to veto it. Meta, X and Snap applauded the measure and are encouraging other states to follow suit. Continue reading Utah Law Is First in Nation Making App Stores Verify User Age

A standalone Meta AI app is in the works for Q2, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The move is aligned with Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s stated intent to propel his company to the forefront of artificial intelligence by year’s end, vaulting ahead of competitors such as OpenAI, Alphabet, Anthropic and xAI. “This is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant,” Zuckerberg said in January during a Q4 earnings call with analysts. Continue reading Meta Plans Its Own Standalone AI App to Take On ChatGPT

Meta has begun testing ads on Threads in the U.S. and Japan with a select group of invited brands. The initial image ads will be slotted between pieces of content in the Threads home feed and will be visible to only a small percentage of users. Drawing from Meta’s existing ads systems framework, “the familiar visual feed format will enable advertisers to easily extend existing image ads to Threads with the check of a box,” according to Meta. Emulating Google, the company will provide users with controls to skip or hide ads. Threads advertisers will be afforded control using the Inventory Filter tool Meta has implemented for Facebook and Instagram Feed and Reels. Continue reading Threads Testing Ads with Select Advertisers in U.S. and Japan

Meta is changing its content moderation policies, eliminating third-party fact checking in lieu of a “community notes” model that will be phased in over the coming months, starting in the U.S. The changes were outlined by Joel Kaplan, the company’s new chief global affairs officer, who was promoted following the recent resignation of Nick Clegg, who managed Meta’s public image since 2018 and set up its oversight board. Kaplan says the policy shift “will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.” Continue reading Meta Platforms Replaces Fact Checking with Community Notes

CTA President Kinsey Fabrizio introduced X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino and journalist Catherine Herridge for a CES keynote conversation on the social media company established by Elon Musk in 2023. Herridge skipped the pleasantries and went straight to the news that Meta was abandoning third-party fact checking, and replacing it with Community Notes, adopting X’s policy on the topic. “Mark [Zuckerberg], Meta, welcome to the party,” said Yaccarino. “How exciting when you think Community Notes are good for the world. It couldn’t be more validating that Mark and Meta realize this.” Continue reading CES: X Corp. Chief Exec Linda Yaccarino Talks Social Media

Meta Platforms revenue was up 19 percent to $40.6 billion in Q3 compared to the same period one year earlier. Profit rose to $15.7 billion — a 35 percent increase from 2023. The company believes that its years of investments in adtech, artificial intelligence and the metaverse are starting to pay off. In Q3, Meta reported $23.2 billion in expenses and capital expenditures of $9.2 billion. And the company isn’t taking its foot off the accelerator, having increased its annual spending forecast by $1 billion to a minimum of $38 billion. Additionally, Meta’s advertising revenue for Q3 was just a tick under its high-end spend projection of $40 billion. Continue reading Meta’s Investments in Adtech, AI, the Metaverse Yield Results