Meta (Facebook, Instagram) delighted the market on Wednesday with strong growths of its quarterly income and profits. This happens despite the macro-economic turbulence linked to customs duties and expenditure in artificial intelligence (AI).
The American social networks Empire has largely exceeded expectations with $ 47.5 billion in turnover in the second quarter, up 22% over one year, according to its statement of results published on Wednesday.
Its net profit emerged at 18.34 billion (+36%), thanks in particular to the increase in advertising prices and the number of users worldwide.
Its action climbed by more than 9% during electronic exchanges after the end of the New York Stock Exchange.
“The company has not only resisted the economic instability of these last months, but it may have even taken advantage of it,” said Minda Smiley, analyst at Emarketer.
The American trade wars create a climate of uncertainty that benefits Meta and its platforms experienced by advertisers, “essential to touch consumers around the world”, abounds Debra Aho Williamson from Sonata Insights.
The boss Mark Zuckerberg attributed the performance of his firm to the integration of AI into his advertising tools.
During the conference to analysts, he cited the example of AI capabilities to recommend locations to advertisers, and user content, which, respectively, improve the conversion rate of advertisements and the time spent on the networks.
“A significant part of our advertising recipes now comes from campaigns using one of our generative AI features,” he added.
“Employee remuneration”
The solid performances of the Menlo Park group (California) fall well for its boss Mark Zuckerberg, who needs to convince the merchant of his extraordinary expenses.
The billionaire wants to regain ground in the race for “superintelligence” or “general IA”, this hypothetical technology, with cognitive capacities greater than those of humans, Grail of Silicon Valley.
It has multiplied the announcements since Llama 4, the latest version of the Meta generative model unveiled in early April, disappointed.
Since then, the group has noted its annual investment forecasts to a range between 66 and $ 72 billion, to build more powerful IA infrastructure.
Then Mark Zuckerberg spoke this month “hundreds of billions of dollars” to invest in new data centers designed specifically for generative AI models, with advanced cutting edges and significant energy resources.
He recently spent 14.3 billion dollars to acquire 49% of the capital of Scale AI, a start-up specializing in the layout of data for models.
Above all, he started his billionaire boss Alexander Wang and several employees of Openai, Anthropic and Google, by offering them staggering bonuses.
“Apart from infrastructure, we plan that employee remuneration will be the second growth factor for spending in 2026, with the recruitment of talents in priority areas,” the company said in its press release on Wednesday.
Financial director Susan Lee acknowledged that company investments were going to “increase considerably” next year.
“Smarter than them”
So far, the market has followed Zuckerberg. Meta’s capitalization has jumped 20% since the start of the year.
“But these enormous investments” will be closely monitored according to Debra Aho Williamson, analyst of Sonata Insights, especially since “the group does not plan to monetize the AI this year directly”
Glasses and “Superintelligence”
The Menlo Park firm focuses on the adoption of its new tools by users, advertisers and developers, but “it may see Openai continue to dig the gap”, thanks to the “strong notoriety of Chatgpt to the general public”, added the expert.
Meta, however, has a considerable scale effect: in June 2025, 3.48 billion people worldwide connected every day on at least one of Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Whatsapp and Messenger), which also give access to its AIA, Meta AI assistant.
On Wednesday, before the publication of the results, Mark Zuckerberg published a blog post on his vision of “superintelligence”, which, according to him, “the potential to open a new era of personal emancipation”.
He therefore defended the constitution of small teams of handpicked engineers.
“At this level, it is no longer a question of learning humans, since the objective is to create something fundamentally smarter than them. So you have to find a way so that it can improve by itself,” he said.
He also ensures that connected glasses will be central to the deployment of this technology.
Sales of Ray-Ban Meta, whose frames integrate microphones, camera and Meta AI, tripled over a year, according to their manufacturer Essilorluxottica.
The Reality Labs branch of the American giant, responsible for the development of devices and software for the metarers (mixture of real and virtual universes via High Tech glasses and helmets), has again widened its losses, at 4.5 billion dollars this quarter.
Meta is also waiting for the verdict of the trial held in April: the American government accuses him of having bought Instagram and WhatsApp more than ten years ago to prevent any competition from emerging against Facebook and Messenger.
If the judge decides in favor of the United States, Meta could be forced to separate from his two flagship platforms.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ATS / AFP
