“In AI, I expect that this is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday on a call with investors following the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. “And I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant.” 

Zuckerberg told investors he believes Meta will eventually spend hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure, imitating and improving on the best technology presented by competitors to ensure its dominance.

The remarks sent Meta shares up as much as 4.5% in extended trading after closing at $676.49 in New York. Earlier, a disappointing sales forecast for the current quarter had weighed on the stock.

Zuckerberg has been using AI technology to transform how Meta’s business works, from the way advertising is targeted to the order of content that appears in its social networks, squeezing more value out of the social media business and its 3.35 billion daily users. That’s all meant to fund money-losing futuristic initiatives like virtual and augmented reality, as well as an expensive build out of AI infrastructure.

Meta executives told investors Wednesday that this heavy investment is already paying off by making ad targeting more efficient. It also teased the idea of making money off its AI assistant at some point in the future, perhaps through subscriptions or sponsored responses, but reiterated that these options weren’t coming anytime soon. 

Earnings Results

Meta gave an outlook for first-quarter sales of $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion. The midpoint missed the $41.7 billion average analyst estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The owner of Facebook and Instagram also reported fourth-quarter sales of $48.4 billion, beating the $47 billion that Wall Street expected on average. Advertising from Meta’s social networks, like Instagram and Facebook, continues to drive the vast majority of sales.

Zuckerberg’s remarks came after Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released a model that it says was developed at a fraction of the cost and computing power of existing technology — news that caused US and European tech stocks to lose nearly $1 trillion in value Monday. 

DeepSeek has done “a number of novel things,” Zuckerberg said. “They have advances that we will hope to implement in our systems — and that’s a part of the nature of how this works, whether it’s a Chinese competitor or not.”

Like DeepSeek, Meta’s artificial intelligence technology, known as Llama, is open source, meaning it lets other companies access and build on top of it. Wall Street viewed the DeepSeek developments as a positive for Meta, and analysts suggested that the Menlo Park, California-based company could learn from its Chinese competitor and possibly bring AI costs down.

Zuckerberg said he expects Meta will be able to reduce cost this year, adding that the company will focus on building “an AI engineering agent that has coding and problem-solving abilities of around a good mid-level engineer.” This assistant could then review code by Meta’s human employees, or write code and other technical fixes for its apps. 

“This is going to be a profound milestone and potentially one of the most important innovations in history,” he added. 

Some are more skeptical of Meta’s AI bet. Emarketer principal analyst Jeremy Goldman in a note on Wednesday said that DeepSeek’s latest model “threw a wrench in the works,” and potentially makes Meta’s AI spending look “bloated, not visionary.”

Meta’s capital expenditures in 2024 were $39.2 billion, exceeding the $38.2 billion that analysts expected on average. Last week, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post that the company would invest as much as $65 billion on AI-related projects in 2025, as well as its core business, which was well above estimates.

Meta is spending big not just for AI, but also for a broader hardware push that requires upfront investment on products that may or may not take off. The Reality Labs devices group, which has lost tens of billions of dollars since 2019, reported sales that were in line with analysts’ estimates. Reality Labs is working on developing Oakley-branded smart glasses for athletes and plans to release new high-end glasses with a built-in display, Bloomberg reported this month. It also is testing new wearable devices such as watches and camera-equipped earbuds. 

Political Change

Zuckerberg attributed much of his bullishness to President Donald Trump’s new administration and its favorable view of tech. “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. “I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock.” 

The CEO has made sweeping changes to the company since the start of the year, many of which have served to better align Meta with the new Trump administration. 

He elevated Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republican strategist, to chief global affairs officer and tapped Dana White, a Trump ally and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, for Meta’s board. Zuckerberg also announced plans to end US-based fact-checking on the company’s social networks, and changed the hateful conduct policy to allow more flexibility around “insulting language” aimed at immigrants and transgender people. He rolled back diversity and inclusion efforts, and moved members of Meta’s civil rights team to other parts of the company.

While there was some concern that these changes might spook brand-conscious advertisers, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li assured investors during the earnings call that Meta hasn’t “seen any noticeable impact from our content content policy changes on advertiser spend.”

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has appeared alongside Trump and his allies. Earlier this year he visited Trump at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, and later joined the president at his inauguration, co-hosting a black-tie reception in Trump’s honor. Zuckerberg also went on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in January, where he criticized the Biden administration and called for more “masculine energy” in corporate America. 

Meta on Wednesday also agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle a claim by the President that Meta’s decision to suspend his accounts after the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol was illegal censorship.