The good news for Meta is that, unlike nearly all AI startups, it’s already making a lot of money. Last quarter, the company’s revenue was just over $39 billion, an annual increase of 22%, and profits were approximately $13.5 billion, an annual increase of 73%. 3.27 billion people use at least one Meta app every day. That size and capital bought the ability to make the big bets for which Zuckerberg was famous.
During Meta’s earnings call on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li reiterated to investors that the financial returns on its recent artificial intelligence investments will be “realized over a longer period of time.” Zuckerberg directly explained why Meta is spending billions of dollars buying Nvidia hardware and other infrastructure ahead of those future returns: “It’s hard to predict how this will impact generations to come, but at this point, I’d rather take the risk on Building capabilities before it is necessary is not too late.
He again said that the Meta AI assistant is expected to become the most used assistant in the world by the end of this year. While he touted the generative AI capabilities that “I think will drive engagement on our product,” he said the real revenue will come from business use cases, such as AI creating ads from scratch and letting businesses run their own in WhatsApp. Artificial intelligence agent.
Some other tidbits from the earnings call:
