Meta Platforms reported a 33% year-over-year increase in first-quarter revenue to $56.3 billion on April 29, reflecting sustained advertising demand and the strategic deployment of automated enterprise software.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram recorded a net income of $26.8 billion and a 41% operating margin for the quarter ending in March. Daily active users across its suite of social media applications reached 3.56 billion.
The firm is actively trialling conversational AI tools to manage customer interactions and execute advertising campaigns for corporate clients.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the initiative, stating the company is “already testing an early version of business AIs.” The volume of these automated communications has accelerated rapidly over the last three months.
CFO Susan Li noted the messaging platform currently handles “more than 10 million conversations each week being facilitated through business AIs, up from 1 million at the start of the year.”
To support these enterprise tools, Meta released Muse Spark, the first foundational language model from its internal research division, Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Li stated they are seeing “double-digit per cent increases in Meta AI sessions per user” following the broad rollout of the new Muse Spark model.
Zuckerberg also highlighted the ‘Meta Compute initiative,’ noting they are rolling out more than 1 gigawatt (GW) of their own custom silicon developed in partnership with Broadcom. They are also deploying 6 GW of AMD hardware, as per the deal announced in February.
Scaling the computing hardware required for these agentic systems prompted the company to raise its 2026 capital expenditure forecast by $10 billion.
The new budget range, set between $125 billion and $145 billion, will finance server components and physical data centre expansion. This reallocation underscores a broader shift in the technology sector towards resource-intensive machine learning infrastructure.
To mitigate the rising hardware costs, Meta will implement structural workforce adjustments.
Following a 5% headcount reduction in 2025, recent reports have suggested the company is preparing for redundancies affecting approximately 10% of its current workforce, or around 8,000 employees, beginning in May 2026.
Li also confirmed on the earnings call, saying that “We recently shared internally that we plan to reduce the size of our employee base in May.”
Addressing the financial rationale for the upcoming cuts, she stated, “We believe a leaner operating model will allow us to move more quickly while also helping to offset the substantial investments we're making.”
Beyond consumer and advertiser tools, Meta is heavily leveraging agentic workflows internally. Zuckerberg noted a dramatic shift in developer velocity, stating that ‘one or two people are building something in a week that would have previously taken dozens of people months.’
Moving into the second quarter, Meta plans to launch its business AI services in additional international markets. The firm will simultaneously deploy automated creative tools across its advertising network while preparing for scheduled legal trials regarding youth safety regulations in the United States.
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