Meta Platforms reported a strong start to the year, with its first-quarter revenue rising 33% year-on-year to $56.3 billion, highlighting steady demand for digital advertising and its growing push into AI-driven tools.
The company behind Facebook and Instagram posted a net profit of $26.8 billion, along with a healthy 41% operating margin for the quarter ending in March. Its family of apps continues to expand its reach, with daily active users touching 3.56 billion.
A major part of Meta’s current strategy revolves around conversational AI for businesses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company has already begun testing early versions of AI systems designed to handle customer chats and run advertising campaigns. Adoption has picked up quickly in recent months.
CFO Susan Li noted that more than 10 million weekly conversations are now being handled through these AI tools, a sharp rise from around 1 million at the beginning of the year. This reflects how quickly businesses are starting to rely on automated communication.
To support this shift, Meta has introduced Muse Spark, its first foundational AI model developed by its in-house research unit. The rollout has already led to a noticeable increase in how often users interact with Meta’s AI features.
On the infrastructure front, Meta is scaling up aggressively. Zuckerberg highlighted the “Meta Compute initiative,” which includes deploying over 1 gigawatt of custom chips built in partnership with Broadcom, along with 6 gigawatts of hardware from AMD.
This rapid expansion in AI capabilities is also driving higher spending. Meta has raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast by $10 billion, bringing the total expected spend to between $125 billion and $145 billion. The investment will mainly go into servers and new data centres, reflecting the rising cost of building large-scale AI systems.
At the same time, the company is looking to streamline operations. After cutting about 5% of its workforce in 2025, Meta is reportedly preparing for further layoffs that could impact around 10% of employees, or roughly 8,000 people, starting May 2026. Li confirmed that these plans have already been shared internally, adding that a leaner structure will help the company move faster while managing its growing AI investments.
Internally, AI is already changing how work gets done at Meta. Zuckerberg pointed out that small teams can now build projects in days that previously took months, showing a clear jump in productivity.
Looking ahead, Meta plans to roll out its business AI tools in more international markets in the coming months. It is also working on automated creative tools for advertisers, while preparing for upcoming legal challenges in the US related to youth safety regulations.
