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The Facebook parent now has 3.27bn daily active people across its family of apps, an increase of 7pc over the same period last year.
Meta has posted a strong financial quarter as CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI is “on track” to become the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year.
In an earnings report published yesterday (31 July), Meta reported that its revenue for the quarter ended 30 June stood at more than $39bn, which represents a 22pc increase over the same quarter last year. It made around $36.4bn in the previous quarter ended 31 March.
While there was a slight increase of 7pc in costs and expenses, the Facebook parent posted income from operations of more than $14.8bn, which is a significant (58pc) jump over last year’s figure. Meanwhile, net income was up 73pc at $13.46bn.
“We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” said Zuckerberg. “We’ve released the first frontier-level open-source AI model, we continue to see good traction with our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and we’re driving good growth across our apps.”
AI growth and metaverse losses
Just last week, Zuckerberg unveiled Llama 3.1, Meta’s latest open-source model that is expected to take on the most advanced private models in the market, including OpenAI’s GPT-4.
“While Meta boasts about Meta AI being on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world, users of Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp can’t not use it as it’s literally the search bar on those apps,” said Mike Proulx of Forrester.
“In a way, it’s a smart move by the company to effectively introduce Meta AI to its users by forcing them to use it.”
Meta’s Reality Labs unit – which is responsible for building the metaverse – recorded a $4.48bn operating loss in the latest quarter, a loss that the company expects will increase due to “ongoing product development efforts”.
Proulx said this was Reality Labs’ second-highest operating loss in two years. “It would seem prudent at this point for Meta to pivot its metaverse ambitions to a much more narrow focus and cut bait on products like Horizon,” he added.
In April, Meta announced it was infusing its Ray-Ban smart glasses with AI and rolling out new functionalities as it makes steady progress in AR technology.
Family daily active people, a metric Meta uses instead of daily active users because of the interconnected nature of its family of apps, is now 3.27bn – an increase of 7pc over last year’s figure. Meanwhile, the company’s global headcount has dropped 1pc to 70,799.
Last week, Meta announced that WhatsApp now has more than 100m monthly active users in the US. Meanwhile, its X competitor Threads hit the 175m monthly active users milestone earlier in the month.
Growing expenses
Meta chief financial officer Susan Li said that third quarter revenue will be in the range of $38.5bn to $41bn while expenditures rise as the company continues to invest heavily in AI.
“While we continue to refine our plans for next year, we currently expect significant capital expenditures growth in 2025 as we invest to support our artificial intelligence research and product development efforts,” Li said.
“We continue to monitor an active regulatory landscape, including the increasing legal and regulatory headwinds in the EU and the US that could significantly impact our business and our financial results.”
Just yesterday, Meta agreed to pay $1.4bn to settle a lawsuit brought against it in Texas accusing the tech giant of secretly capturing the personal data of millions of Texans by using facial recognition software for more than a decade.
Meanwhile, Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ business model came under EU scrutiny earlier this month. Under this model, EU users of Meta apps Instagram and Facebook have to choose between using the apps for free with personalised ads enabled or sign up to a monthly subscription for an uninterrupted and privacy-friendly experience.
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