Meta AI to 1 Billion Users? Inside Its Bold 2025 Vision

Did you know that Meta is one of the largest holdings in our EasyETFs AI World Actively Managed ETF? Meta’s latest earnings confirm its leadership in AI and advertising, with 21% revenue growth in 4Q’24. Zuckerberg predicts Meta AI will reach 1 billion users, here’s what investors should know. More from Shaun Krom of EasyAssetManagement.

• Meta’s ad business is thriving, with a 21% revenue increase and a 14% jump in ad prices, thanks to smarter AI-driven ad targeting.
• Meta AI now has 700M monthly users, and Zuckerberg expects it to hit 1B this year, solidifying Meta’s AI dominance.
• The company is also reinvesting big ($60B+ in capex) to expand AI, including its Llama 4 model and custom MTIA chips, positioning for future monetization.

AI and Advertising: The Cornerstones of Growth
Mark Zuckerberg emphasized the significance of 2024 for Meta’s long-term strategy:

“This is going to be a really big year. I know it always feels like every year is a big year, but more than usual, it feels like the trajectory for most of our long-term initiatives is going to be a lot clearer by the end of this year.”

Investors seem to share his optimism, as Meta’s stock has continued to climb, extending its gains post-earnings.

AI-Driven Advertising Growth - Ad Revenue and Performance
Investor concerns about tough year-over-year comparisons were justified, given that Meta’s ad revenue grew by 24% in 4Q’23. Yet, the company still delivered an impressive 21% revenue growth in 4Q’24.

• Ad impressions grew 6% YoY
• Average price per ad increased 14% YoY

Meta is leveraging AI to drive pricing and efficiency:
“We generally expect that we are going to be able to deliver ongoing ad performance improvements through a lot of the ongoing work that we're doing across our monetization road map... We believe we'll continue to get better at driving conversions for advertisers. And when we do, that will have the effect of continuing to lift CPMs over time because we're delivering more conversions per impression served, resulting in higher value impressions.”

Meta’s AI investments are particularly evident in its Andromeda machine learning system, developed with NVIDIA. Andromeda has increased ad retrieval model complexity by 10,000x, improving ad quality by 8% and positioning Meta as a leader in AI-driven advertising.

Additionally, Advantage+ shopping campaigns now exceed a $20 billion annual run rate, growing 70% YoY. Generative AI ad tools have also seen rapid adoption, with 4 million advertisers using at least one tool, up from 1 million just six months ago.

AI: The Future of Meta’s Ecosystem

Meta AI and Llama
Meta AI is scaling rapidly, now reaching 700 million monthly active users (vs. 500 million in 3Q’24). Zuckerberg’s vision for AI is ambitious:

“I expect that this is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant.”

On the model development front, Meta is doubling down on open-source AI with Llama 4:

“I think this will very well be the year when Llama and open-source become the most advanced and widely used AI models. Llama 4 is making great progress, and our goal is to lead.”

Zuckerberg also highlighted the national importance of maintaining leadership in AI, particularly in response to advancements from China’s DeepSeek.

Advertising Spend and AI-Powered Monetization: Capital Allocation
Meta’s decision to hold off on share repurchases reflects its focus on reinvesting in AI and infrastructure. With capex expected to reach $60-65 billion in 2025, the company is prioritizing AI advancements over immediate returns to shareholders.

Meta is also deploying MTIA (Meta Training & Inference Accelerator) chips to improve compute efficiency:

“We're pursuing cost efficiencies by deploying our custom MTIA silicon… to optimize our unique workloads.”

2024 opex came in at $95B (vs. guidance of $96-98B), but 2025 opex guidance is set significantly higher at $114-119B, reflecting ongoing AI and infrastructure investments.

Outlook & Closing Thoughts

For 1Q’25, Meta expects revenue growth of +11% to +18% YoY in constant currency, aligning with high-end consensus expectations.

Zuckerberg offered a measured outlook on monetization:

“The actual business opportunity for Meta AI and AI studio… remains outside of '25 for the most part. We've run a process like this many times. We build a product, make it good, scale it, and build a business around it. That’s what we do.”

While Meta is well-positioned for long-term success, the path forward will not be linear. To grow operating profit by 15% in 2025, Meta must generate $30 billion in incremental revenue—a daunting task as the company’s increasing infrastructure investments make it more capital-intensive.

Meta’s AI and advertising innovations will be the key drivers of its future.

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