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.

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.

(For top technology news of the day, subscribe to our tech newsletter Today’s Cache)

“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.