The advertising business of the Facebook group Meta is running at full speed. In the last quarter, the group’s revenue jumped by 22 percent year-on-year to just over 39 billion dollars. Profits rose by 73 percent to just under 13.5 billion dollars (12.44 billion euros).
With this financial cushion, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to continue investing in the development of artificial intelligence. The chatbot Meta AI is on its way to becoming the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year, Zuckerberg emphasized after presenting the figures.
However, the AI visions also require high investments. Meta’s expenses rose by seven percent to $24.22 billion last quarter. Meta now expects costs of between $37 and $40 billion this year – and is preparing investors for the fact that it will grow “significantly” in 2025. Computing power for training AI models is particularly expensive.
The Reality Labs division, in which Meta combined its business with virtual worlds and computer glasses, continues to devour a lot of money. The division posted an operating loss of almost 4.9 billion dollars, after a loss of 3.74 billion dollars a year ago. The business with apps such as Facebook and Instagram, on the other hand, brought in an operating profit of 19.3 billion dollars last quarter.
Meta shares rose by around four percent in after-hours trading.
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