Meta shares plunged on Wednesday as investors balked at its promise to keep spending on artificial intelligence (AI) projects while profits dwindle.
Shares in the firm behind Instagram and Facebook fell 11% after its quarter results showed revenue between April and June grew 28% from a year ago, while profits fell 14%.
Meta said it would spend $130bn (£973m) to $145bn this year, mostly on AI projects, up from the $125bn it said it planned to spend just three months ago.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s AI spending was “accelerating every part of our core business” and that it planned to start selling the technology to other businesses.
He said on the call that Meta’s AI abilities and models were driving engagement on Instagram and Facebook and boosting the ability of smaller businesses to create advertising. Zuckerberg added that the company was developing AI agents, or AI chatbots that act somewhat autonomously.
Such agents “will be the next wave of our product line in the months and years to come,” Zuckerberg said.
“Soon, we’ll have agents that can work 24/7 on your behalf”, Zuckerberg added during the call. “Great personal agents need to just work out of the box. I’m very excited about this and we will have more to share soon.”
As for Meta’s plans to sell AI models and computer tools to other firms for the first time, Zuckerberg said the first step is to make its Muse Spark AI model “easier for companies to integrate”.
“We expect to build a large business for large businesses,” Zuckerberg said. “We have more coding and product tools on our roadmap.”
Although Zuckerberg said the move would flex “a different muscle than we’ve historically had”, he said the financial opportunity was too big to ignore.
“It’s not just about selling compute; it’s the API services and the productivity services and I think there is a very, very large opportunity there and we’re quite focused on that.”
