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Mark Zuckerberg says he knew he was taking an enormous risk when he greenlit Meta\u2019s AI buildout\u2014a commitment he pegged at as much as $200 billion\u2014before there was any proof it would work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to write this check for, like, I don\u2019t know, like $100 billion, $200 billion,\u201d Zuckerberg said on a recent episode of Cheeky Pint, the podcast hosted by Stripe cofounder John Collison. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Alex, are you sure this is going to work?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexandr Wang, Meta\u2019s chief AI officer, appeared alongside Zuckerberg and said decisions of that size get made \u201clong before there\u2019s proof points around whether or not even the thing is working.\u201d He added: \u201cIt\u2019s like the opposite of Lean Startup.\u201d<\/p>\n
The episode was released Oct. 12, the same day Meta launched Muse Wonder, the first frontier-class model from the superintelligence lab Wang leads. Meta has guided for as much as $145 billion in capital expenditures this year, much of it on AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Much of that money is going toward what Zuckerberg describes as a \u201cfull-stack\u201d operation.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeta is a full-stack tech company,\u201d he said. \u201cWe build our own data centers, we build our own chips, we build our own low-level infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lessons from the smartphone wars<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s push to own the full stack may stem from his nearly two-decade rivalry with Apple and Google, which control the world\u2019s dominant smartphone platforms. Facebook\u2019s iPhone app launched in July 2008, followed by an Android app in September 2009. Its mobile years that followed were marked by friction with the platform owners, some of it self-inflicted.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg repeatedly sought workarounds to the limits those platforms imposed. In 2013, Facebook pushed updates to its Android app outside the Google Play store, prompting Google to ban the practice. In 2019, Apple shut down a Facebook \u201cResearch\u201d app that paid users, including teens, up to $20 a month for sweeping access to their phone data. The biggest blow came in 2021, when Apple began letting iPhone users block apps from tracking them\u2014a change Meta later said would cost it about $10 billion in 2022 alone.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg has said that experience shapes his approach to AI. \u201cOne of my formative experiences has been building our services constrained by what Apple will let us build on their platforms,\u201d he wrote in a 2024 post on Meta\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Speaking with Collison, Zuckerberg said owning the stack is \u201cless about wanting to own a platform for its own sake. It\u2019s about being able to build the best things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cost of going it alone<\/p>\n
Unlike Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, Meta doesn\u2019t run a cloud business that rents its data centers to outside customers, so it shoulders those costs itself. Zuckerberg said a one-gigawatt AI data center costs $50 billion to $60 billion to build and roughly $15 billion a year to operate. Meta\u2019s Hyperion campus in Louisiana is designed to scale to five gigawatts.<\/p>\n
That could change. In July, Bloomberg reported that Meta is building a cloud business to sell AI computing power and is also weighing selling raw computing capacity. Weeks later, Zuckerberg confirmed the cloud plans on Meta\u2019s earnings call. On Cheeky Pint, he framed all that compute as a hedge.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026If like the cost is whatever, $15 billion a gigawatt, we could get like a lot more for that,\u201d Zuckerberg said. \u201cSo I think that you, in order for it not to work out, it\u2019s not just that we have to fail, AI overall has to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bet on agentic commerce<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s full-stack ambitions don\u2019t stop at data centers. Zuckerberg and Wang want Muse Wonder and the more powerful Muse Wonder Full to drive Muse, Meta\u2019s personal AI agent, which can act on people\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best personal agent should feel like a team of experts in your corner,\u201d Wang said. \u201cYour legal team, and your finance team, and your medical team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wang said he uses Muse to \u201csource increasingly obscure teas from increasingly obscure vendors of tea.\u201d Zuckerberg said he set up an Instacart account specifically for Muse, which orders ingredients for weekend baking projects with his 3-year-old daughter. He went from using Instacart maybe twice a year to \u201conce or twice a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
That vision of full-fledged agentic commerce could, paradoxically, disrupt Meta\u2019s main profit engine. Advertising made up about 98% of Meta\u2019s revenue last quarter, and eMarketer projects the company\u2019s worldwide ad revenue will reach $243.46 billion this year, surpassing Google\u2019s for the first time.<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s future business model<\/p>\n
But if AI agents compare prices, check delivery dates, read reviews, and ultimately make purchase decisions, who are the ads for?<\/p>\n
Collison raised a version of that question on the podcast, suggesting that a business that \u201conly succeeds by overcharging consumers\u201d would rationally want to keep agents out. Zuckerberg countered that few businesses have tried to block agents and that those that do are likely to lose out. \u201cWe have way more businesses that are calling us asking to integrate deeply,\u201d he said. He argued agents could grow commerce overall: \u201cIs the total addressable market for all of commerce just increasing dramatically?\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg also sketched how Meta could make money beyond ads. \u201cSubscriptions is going to be a big one,\u201d he said. Muse is free to use, with paid plans at $20 and $100 a month for heavier users. On commerce, he floated taking \u201ca small cut of what you are saving or making for people.\u201d And on Meta\u2019s July earnings call, he pitched business agents as working \u201cjust like the ad system\u201d: \u201cWe will get paid when we deliver results for those businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Zuckerberg hasn\u2019t addressed directly, on the podcast or the earnings call, is whether agents will eat into the ad impressions that generate nearly all of Meta\u2019s revenue today. For now, Wall Street isn\u2019t pressing the point. Bank of America analyst Justin Post wrote last week that Meta is \u201cback on offense with AI,\u201d naming rising AI spending\u2014not agents\u2014as the top risk.<\/p>\n
#Zuckerberg #spent #years #building #Apples #terms #bet #owning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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