The tech giant plans to invest big in AI as it sees “strong momentum” in the area.

Meta’s third-quarter revenue rose 19% to $40.59 billion, the highest in recent years, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed to the company’s progress in AI in its applications and activities. During the latest earnings conference call yesterday (October 30), the tech giant revealed a significant increase in net income of 35% to $15.68 billion, taking diluted earnings per share to 6.03 dollars.

Chief Financial Officer Susan Li expects Meta’s fourth-quarter revenue to increase by another $5 billion, bringing it to between $45 billion and $48 billion.

Zuckerberg said parts of the company’s “long-term vision around AI and the future of computing” were increasingly “focused” and added that Meta AI now numbers 500 million active users per month. Improvements to Meta’s AI-powered feed and video recommendations have led to an 8% increase in time spent on Facebook and 6% on Instagram this year, he said, and more than a million advertisers have used Meta’s generative AI tools to create more than 15 million ads alone. last month.

Meta’s large language models are progressing rapidly, with Llama 4, its new LLM model being “well advanced in development,” according to Zuckerberg. He expects the smaller Llama 4 models to go on sale for the first time early next year, which he says will be “a big deal”, highlighting new capabilities and speed.

“AI presents opportunities”

Significantly, Zuckerberg said that advances in AI would accelerate the company’s core business and, therefore, more investment in AI was justified. “Our investments in AI continue to require serious infrastructure, and I plan to continue to invest significantly there,” he said.

The company did not give an exact budget for future AI spending, but Li said it expects a significant “increase” in the capacity of its infrastructure.

Meta shares fell 4% despite better-than-expected profits and revenue, with Reuters reporting that investors were likely spooked by big AI spending plans.

And the increased focus on AI also comes with regulatory challenges.

Meta published compact versions of its Llama 3.2 AI models last week, as noted, used significantly less space than the original 3.2 versions released last month. However, the larger multimodal models of Llama 3.2, 11B and 90B, which can handle multiple formats, such as text, images, audio and video, are not available in EU. This summer, Meta said it would not launch these models in the EU due to the bloc’s “unpredictable” regulatory environment.

The month preceding this announcement, the company canceled plans to train its large language models using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram, after intensive discussions with the Irish Data Protection Commission.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Register at Daily BriefSilicon Republic’s summary of essential science and technology news.