Meta\u2019s artificial intelligence spending spree appears to be paying off with investors, who sent the company\u2019s stock soaring after hours on Wednesday following a blowout quarterly earnings report.<\/p>\n
The Menlo Park, California-based company easily beat Wall Street\u2019s expectations for the second quarter, helped by higher advertising revenue and a growing user base on its flagship social media platforms. The money is helping to fund the company\u2019s massive investments in AI development and hiring top talent at eye-popping compensation levels. <\/p>\n
\u201cNot only has Meta made demonstrable strides with AI, but it\u2019s helping to future proof itself as a growth company, should its family of apps get affected by the current anti-trust case or changing social media sentiment,\u201d said Forrester research director Mike Proulx.<\/p>\n
Meta is facing an antitrust case<\/a> that\u2019s now awaiting a judge\u2019s decision and could force the company to break off WhatsApp and Instagram, startups Meta bought more than a decade ago that have since grown into social media powerhouses.<\/p>\n The company earned $18.34 billion, or $7.14 per share, in the April-June period. That\u2019s up 36% from $13.47 billion, or $5.16 per share, in the same period a year earlier. <\/p>\n Revenue jumped 22% to $47.52 billion from $39.07 billion.<\/p>\n Analysts expected Meta to earn $5.88 per share on revenue of $44.81 billion, according to a poll by FactSet. <\/p>\n Meta\u2019s daily active user base on its apps \u2014 Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads \u2014 was 3.48 billion, up 6% year-over-year. <\/p>\n Meta said it expects costs to increase as it spends billions on infrastructure and luring highly compensated employees as it works on its AI ambitions. It\u2019s forecasting 2025 expenses to be in the range of $114 billion to $118 billion, up 20% to 24% year-over-year.<\/p>\n In the latest demonstration of his AI enthusiasm, CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday posted a note<\/a> detailing his views on \u201cpersonal superintelligence\u201d that he believes will \u201chelp humanity accelerate our pace of progress.\u201d While he said that developing superintelligence is now \u201cin sight,\u201d he did not detail how this will be achieved or exactly what \u201csuperintelligence\u201d means.<\/p>\n The abstract idea of \u201csuperintelligence\u201d is what rival companies call artificial general intelligence, or AGI. It\u2019s the latest pivot for a tech leader who in 2021 went all-in on the idea of the metaverse, changing the company\u2019s name and investing billions into advancing virtual reality and related technology.<\/p>\n \u201cMeta\u2019s vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone. We believe in putting this power in people\u2019s hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives,\u201d Zuckerberg wrote. \u201cThis is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output.\u201d <\/p>\n Zuckerberg said in a conference call he believes AI glasses are going to be \u201cthe main way we integrate superintelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, Meta invested $14.3 billion<\/a> in AI company Scale and recruited its CEO Alexandr Wang to join a team developing \u201csuperintelligence.\u201d The tech giant also cut a 20-year deal in early June to secure nuclear power<\/a> to help meet surging demand for AI and other computing needs. <\/p>\n Meta ended the quarter with 75,945 employees, up 7% from a year earlier. <\/p>\n Meta\u2019s shares rose $81.87, or 11.8% to $777.08 in after-hours trading \u2014 on track to reach a record high Thursday after the stock market opens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s artificial intelligence spending spree appears to be paying off with investors, who sent the company\u2019s stock soaring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,45,49,3337,3335,48,2561,11313,2746,27102,27104,27103,61],"class_list":["post-36542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-ca-state-wire","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-inc","tag-information-technology","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta-platforms","tag-mike-proulx","tag-public-opinion","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}