Meta

Meta Platforms, Inc. was incorporated in July 2004 and is headquartered at 1 Meta Way in Menlo Park, California. Its mission is to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible. Meta builds products that help people connect, share, find communities, and grow businesses across mobile and desktop, with growing focus on wearables and immersive devices. Its Class A shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker META.

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Meta’s largest business is its Family of Apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, and it generates substantially all of its revenue from selling advertising placements across these services. In September 2025, Meta reported an average of 3.54 billion Family daily active people, highlighting its global reach. For full year 2024, Meta reported $164.50 billion in total revenue. Headcount was 78,450 as of September 30, 2025.

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Meta reports results in two segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs. Reality Labs sells consumer hardware, software, and content related to virtual, mixed, and augmented reality, and it anchors Meta’s work on the next computing platform. Meta is also investing heavily in AI that powers ranking, recommendations, ad tools, and new consumer experiences. Meta AI is available across its apps, on Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and on the web.

Meta generates substantially all of its revenue from selling advertising placements across its Family of Apps, with ads priced through auction-based systems and optimized through measurement and ranking tools. In the quarter ended September 30, 2025, Meta reported revenue of $51.24 billion, driven by ad delivery growth and pricing strength. Ad impressions across the Family of Apps rose 14% year over year, and the average price per ad rose 10% year over year.

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Core activities

1. Family of Apps engagement at global scale
   Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp act as distribution for feed, video, messaging, and community features that drive time spent and inventory for ads. Meta reported 3.54 billion Family daily active people on average for September 2025.
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2. Performance advertising engine
   Meta’s self-serve ad platform sells placements to millions of advertisers, with AI systems improving targeting, creative selection, and conversion optimization. Meta has stated a goal to reach full automation of ad creation and targeting using AI by the end of 2026.
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3. Messaging and business messaging
   WhatsApp and Messenger support customer support and commerce workflows, with business messaging positioned as a long-term monetization lever alongside ads across the wider app family.
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4. Reality Labs for the next platform bet
   Reality Labs sells AR and VR related hardware, software, and content, while operating at a significant loss as Meta funds product development. In Q3 2025, Reality Labs posted an operating loss of $4.43 billion.
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5. AI models and infrastructure
   Meta invests in large-scale compute and AI models to improve recommendations, ad performance, and product experiences, linking product engagement to monetization efficiency.
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Market position

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Meta sits at the center of global social advertising thanks to its reach, cross-app identity and measurement stack, and ability to convert engagement into performance outcomes for advertisers. Industry forecasts from WARC expect social media ad spend to reach $306.4 billion in 2025 and attribute roughly 60% of social ad spend to Meta, reflecting its scale versus other social platforms.

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Meta’s closest competition for ad budgets comes from Google and YouTube in search and video, Amazon in retail media, and ByteDance in short-form video. WARC also highlights continued consolidation, with Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta taking a combined 56.1% share of advertising spend outside China in 2025, rising further in 2026.

Meta’s consumer apps are not broadly accessible in mainland China, where user access to Facebook and other Meta products has been restricted in whole or in part for extended periods. Meta still treats China as a meaningful commercial market because Chinese companies buy ads to reach customers outside China, often through a small number of ad resellers that serve advertisers based in China.

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This makes China less important as a user growth driver and more important as an advertiser demand center tied to cross-border e-commerce and app marketing. Reuters reported that Meta’s advertising revenue from China exceeded $18 billion in 2024, over 10% of companywide revenue, despite the consumer-facing block.

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Recent reporting also highlights elevated ad fraud risk linked to China-based advertisers and intermediaries, which increases enforcement pressure and reputational risk around this revenue stream.

Meta’s near-term growth case still starts with its ad engine. In Q3 2025 (reported October 29, 2025), revenue reached $51.24 billion, with ad impressions up 14% year over year and average price per ad up 10%. Family daily active people averaged 3.54 billion in September 2025, which keeps Meta’s ad inventory and measurement loop at global scale.

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The next inflection point is the AI investment cycle. Management guided for 2025 capital expenditures of $70 to $72 billion and said 2026 capex dollar growth should be notably larger than 2025, with total expenses set to grow faster as infrastructure costs rise (cloud, depreciation) and AI hiring continues. Meta guided Q4 2025 revenue to $56 to $59 billion, and it scheduled its Q4 and full year 2025 results for January 28, 2026.

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Key growth drivers include:

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1. AI-led ad automation and performance
   Meta’s stated direction points toward end-to-end AI workflows for ad creation and targeting by end-2026, aiming to lift advertiser ROI and reduce friction in campaign setup.
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2. Threads monetization at scale
   Meta is expanding ads on Threads to all users globally starting the week of January 26, 2026, after earlier expansion to eligible advertisers. This adds new inventory that plugs into Meta’s ad stack.
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3. Wearables as a distribution channel for Meta AI
   Meta paused international expansion of Ray-Ban Display glasses due to supply constraints and strong US demand, and separate reporting points to discussions about ramping production capacity for smart glasses.
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4. Power procurement for data center buildout
   In January 2026, Meta announced long-duration nuclear power agreements and development partnerships tied to data center demand, including work with Oklo and others.
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5. Capital returns alongside reinvestment
   Meta combined large capex plans with shareholder returns in Q3 2025 through buybacks and dividends.
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Challenges ahead include:
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1. Margin pressure from infrastructure spend
   2026 expense growth is tied to depreciation, cloud, and AI headcount, after a 2025 capex step-up.
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2. Reality Labs drag
   Reality Labs recorded a Q3 2025 operating loss of $4.432 billion, keeping near-term earnings sensitive to long-horizon hardware bets.
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3. Regulatory and litigation risk
   The FTC said it will appeal the November 18, 2025 ruling in Meta’s antitrust case, and Meta flagged youth-related trials scheduled for 2026. In the EU, the Commission found Meta in breach of DMA obligations in April 2025 and has also issued additional preliminary findings tied to platform obligations.