Mark Zuckerberg wearing sunglasses” width=”970″ height=”738″ data-caption=’Mark Zuckerberg at The 11th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony held at Barker Hanger on April 05, 2025 in Santa Monica, California. <span class=”media-credit”>Variety via Getty Images</span>’>
Meta beat analyst expectations in the first quarter, reporting $42.3 billion in revenue, up 16 percent from the year prior, and $16.6 billion in profit, up 35 percent. Advertising remained its dominant income source, generating $41.3 billion in the past quarter. While much of Meta’s attention remains on advancing A.I., CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized a broader, longer-term vision: using A.I. to transform how businesses engage in commerce via messaging platforms.
“Business messaging should be the next pillar of our business,” Zuckerberg told analysts on an earnings call yesterday (April 30). “Just like every business today has an email address, social media account and website, they’ll also have an A.I. business agent that can do customer support and sales.”
Business messaging currently falls under Meta’s “other” revenue segment, which rose 34 percent year-over-year to $510 million in the first quarter, driven largely by growth in WhatsApp sales.
Business messaging is already popular in countries with low labor costs such as Thailand and Vietnam, said Zuckerberg, who said these two countries are among Meta’s top nations by revenue, even though they rank much lower in global GDP.
“This phenomenon hasn’t yet spread to developed countries, because the cost of labor is too high to make this a profitable model before A.I.—but A.I. should solve this,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta is already piloting A.I.-powered chatbots with select businesses on WhatsApp and Messenger, with plans to eventually roll them out more broadly. These assistants can handle customer inquiries and assist in sales, offering a scalable solution for companies looking to automate and personalize their communications.
“We’re already hearing positive feedback that our chatbots are saving businesses time and helping them identify what conversations to focus on,” said Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, on yesterday’s earnings call.
Business messaging is just one of five downstream A.I. opportunities Zuckerberg outlined. Others include boosting advertising efficiency, enhancing content recommendations, popularizing personal A.I. devices like Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, and further customizing the Meta AI assistant.
To support this expansive vision, Meta is significantly increasing its A.I. infrastructure spend. After initially projecting 2024 capital expenditures between $60 billion and $65 billion, the company raised its estimate to a range of $64 billion to $72 billion, citing greater investments in data centers and hardware.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that Meta doesn’t need every A.I. initiative to succeed to justify this level of investment. “But if we do, then I think that we will be widely happy with the investments that we are making,” he said.
