Meta reports revenue jump as Zuckerberg sees stock volatility over AI plans

Meta on Wednesday reported quarterly revenue of $36.46 billion, up by 27%, when compared to last year, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailed the company’s AI product releases and stressed on his aim to share them with more customers and begin monetising the offerings.

Total costs and expenses in the first quarter came to $22.64 billion, which was an increase of 6% year-over-year.

Zuckerberg pointed out that the new Meta AI chatbot, powered by the company’s open source and most advanced Llama 3 model, had already been tried out by tens of millions of people.

He said that the Meta AI chatbot would be rolled out to more regions in the coming months.

However, Zuckerberg warned that company stock prices could shift soon and that it could take time for profits to emerge.

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“I think it’s worth calling out that we’ve historically seen a lot of volatility in our stock during this phase of our product playbook ‐‐ where we’re investing in scaling a new product but aren’t yet monetizing it. We saw this with Reels, Stories, as News Feed transitioned to mobile and more. And I also expect to see a multi‐year investment cycle before we’ve fully scaled Meta AI, business AIs, and more into the profitable services I expect as well,” said Zuckerberg in his prepared remarks.

The Meta chief pointed out how more content on Facebook and Instagram was being recommended by AI, and suggested ways AI interactions with users could be monetised in the future.

“Right now, about 30% of the posts on Facebook feed are delivered by our AI recommendation system. That’s up 2x over the last couple of years. And for the first time ever, more than 50% of the content people see on Instagram is now AI recommended,” Zuckerberg said.

He also went on to speak positively about demand for the company’s wearables, including its Ray-Ban smart glasses and the Quest headsets.

That being said, Meta reported that Reality Labs’ operating loss was $3.8 billion while its first quarter revenue was $440 million.

Closing off, Zuckerberg quipped that his daughters would want him to share that Taylor Swift had joined the text-based social media app Threads, which had 150 million monthly active users.

Meta reported that its headcount was 69,329 as of March 31, which was a decrease of 10% year-over-year.

Zuckerberg said Meta’s headcount would be “carefully” managed in the future.