The Wall Street Journal claims Meta might be reaping some of the richest benefits from the AI boom so far.
Meta’s revenue rose 22 per cent year on year in 2025 to $201 billion, and it is talking up current-quarter growth as high as 34 per cent.
That is hefty for a business that pulled in nearly $60 billion in the latest three-month stretch, and it is still acting like this is the warm-up.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said, “Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business. But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon,”
Meta chief financial officer Susan Li said the company doubled the number of graphics processing units used to train its ad-ranking model in the fourth quarter, alongside a new learning architecture. She said that pushed Facebook ad clicks 3.5 per cent higher and lifted Instagram conversions by more than one per cent.
Li said other AI tweaks drove a three per cent conversion increase across Meta’s family of apps, while the ad-buying side is moving towards automating ad creation for businesses. On the same call, Li said the combined revenue run rate of video-generation tools hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter.
CNBC said Meta shares jumped more than 10 per cent this week “after showing signs that AI investments are boosting the bottom line.”
Deutsche Bank internet analyst Benjamin Black said: “The more compute the ad platform gets, the better it performs, and that’s a real structural advantage that Meta has. If you can see that yesterdays spend is driving this month’s growth, then as a good businessperson, you’re going to continue to feed the beast.”
Meta “plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on its AI build-out this year,” which is nearly double what it spent in 2025, and that sort of tab only makes sense if the ad money machine keeps printing.
