Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, revealed plans to expand Meta AI’s capabilities, even as investors remained worried about the impact of Trump’s tariffs on Meta’s strategy. The Meta boss hinted that answers to the planned strategy could be unveiled this week during the company’s first LlamaCon for developers on April 29th.
Zuckerberg said he had plans to make Meta the market leader in AI, even as investors wanted to know how President Trump’s tariffs-centered trade policies would impact that strategy.
Meta previously announced it would raise its spending levels to support infrastructure investments for its AI efforts. Although the announcement sent the company’s shares plunging, investors have come around to its costly AI ambitions. Zuckerberg also said it was clear that there were a lot of new opportunities to use AI advances to accelerate Meta’s core business and have strong ROI over the next few years.
Meta plans for AI expansion as analysts weigh Trump’s tariffs impact
According to Zuckerberg, Meta already has plans to expand its AI infrastructure despite growing pressure due to the anticipated effects of Trump’s tariffs. However, Needham analysts did not expect Meta to cut its 2025 CapX guidance of $60B-$65B for its GenAI infrastructure because they saw this as an important 10-year investment.
The analysts acknowledged that tariffs added risks of upward cost revisions. Intel CFO David Zinsner also said that U.S. trade policies increased the chance of an economic slowdown, with the probability of a recession growing.
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Google CFO Anat Ashkenazi reassured that his company remained committed to its $75 billion investment in capital expenditures this year, but also acknowledged that the “timing of deliveries and construction schedules” could lead to some quarter-to-quarter spending variations.
“Investors want to see ROI on all these AI investments, and while Meta has shown clear benefits from leveraging AI to improve its products and drive faster revenue growth, it’s been hard to quantify those benefits.”
~ Youssef Squali, Analyst at Truist Securities
William Blair research analyst Ralph Schackart believes Meta has an “early mover advantage” at scale in a multi-trillion dollar market, adding that Meta is very well positioned to leverage its billions of global users on multiple platforms. However, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Deepak Mathivanan also noted that although Meta’s large user base across its family of apps gave Meta AI an advantage over rivals like ChatGPT in terms of reach, the users may not interact with Meta AI in the same way they do with rival chat apps.
Zuckerberg goes all in on Meta’s 2025 AI strategy
The Facebook and WhatsApp owner in January believed 2025 was going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reached over 1 billion people, and he expected Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant. Meta announced in February plans to debut a standalone Meta AI app during Q2 2025 and test a paid subscription service, which will give monthly subscribers access to more powerful versions — just like on ChatGPT.
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This April, Meta released the first models from its latest open-source AI software, Llama 4, as the company scrambled to lead the race in generative AI investments. However, Zuckerberg pointed out that Meta had not yet released the biggest and most powerful Llama 4 model, which outperforms other AI models in its class and serves as “a teacher” for Meta’s new models. His comments about AI highlighted how the technology had become Meta’s top priority, directly impacting the company’s business and potentially paving the way for future revenue opportunities.
Meta aims to build more enterprise-focused AI features as Zuckerberg claims that Meta AI is on track to becoming the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of this year.
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