Meta Platforms, Inc.

Meta Platforms, Inc. is the present form of the company Mark Zuckerberg started in 2004. The company and the product need to be read separately. The product Facebook launched on 4 February 2004; the legal entity was TheFacebook, Inc., then Facebook, Inc., and became Meta Platforms, Inc. at Connect on 28 October 2021. What changed then was the corporate brand and the reporting structure — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all kept their product names. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Meta earns almost all of its revenue from advertising: US$200.97 billion for full-year 2025, of which Family of Apps accounted for US$198.76 billion.

History

Meta's history has been driven less by invention than by buying products and turning them into advertising surfaces. Both landmark deals — Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 — carry an announced value that differs from the accounting purchase price, because the consideration was stock rather than cash. Instagram was reported at about US$1 billion on announcement; the total purchase price Facebook booked as a business acquisition in its 2012 Form 10-K was US$521 million (roughly 12 million vested Class B shares to non-employee stockholders plus US$300 million in cash), with a further ~11 million unvested shares issued to employee stockholders, fair value US$194 million, recognised as share-based compensation over a three-year service period. The two figures are not truth against falsehood; they are two different metrics — headline consideration and accounting purchase price.

The October 2021 rename came with a split of reporting into two segments: Family of Apps (FoA) and Reality Labs (RL). The year that followed was brutal: Apple's iOS changes hurt ad targeting and measurement, TikTok took attention, and Reality Labs consumed cash. Guidance for Q1 2022 fell to 3-11% year-on-year revenue growth, and on 9 November 2022 Zuckerberg announced a cut of about 13% of staff, more than 11,000 people, writing "I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that." Through 2023 Meta removed management layers and rebuilt ad delivery around machine learning, and growth returned.

From 2025 the centre of gravity moved to AI. Meta took a minority stake in Scale AI, carried at US$13.80 billion at the end of 2025, brought in Alexandr Wang, and stood up Meta Superintelligence Labs, while continuing to release the Llama models as open weights. Capital expenditure guidance for 2026 is US$130-145 billion, roughly double the US$72.22 billion spent in 2025. In May 2026 about 8,000 employees were placed under a headcount reduction, and Q2 costs carried US$1.18 billion of severance as a result.

Products and Services

The metric is easy to get wrong. The headline user number Meta reports today is family daily active people (DAP) — daily, across the Family of Apps — not MAU and not registered accounts. DAP averaged 3.60 billion in June 2026, up 3% year on year.

Key Events

• 4 February 2004: Facebook launches; the entity is TheFacebook, Inc., renamed Facebook, Inc. the following year.
• 2012: IPO on NASDAQ under the ticker FB; Instagram acquired (announced ~US$1 bn; US$521 m booked in the 10-K).
• 2014: WhatsApp acquired (announced ~US$16 bn; ~US$22 bn in value at closing) and Oculus VR acquired.
• 17 March 2018: the Cambridge Analytica reporting makes regulation a permanent operating cost.
• 28 October 2021: renamed Meta Platforms, Inc.; FoA / RL segment reporting begins.
• 9 June 2022: ticker changes from FB to META.
• 9 November 2022: more than 11,000 roles cut, about 13% of staff.
• 5 July 2023: Threads launches.
• 18 November 2024: the European Commission fines Meta about EUR 798 million over tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook; Meta appeals on 28 January 2025.
• April 2025: the Commission fines Meta EUR 200 million for a "subscription for no ads" model that fails the DMA; Meta appeals on 4 July 2025.
• 2025: Scale AI investment; Meta Superintelligence Labs established.
• 18 November 2025: Judge James Boasberg (D.D.C.) rejects the FTC's monopolisation case.
• May 2026: about 8,000 roles cut.

Key Metrics

• Revenue (FY2025): US$200.97 bn (+22%) / operating income US$83.28 bn / net income US$60.46 bn
• Revenue (Q2 2026): US$60.80 bn (+28%) / net income US$15.85 bn (-14%)
• Family daily active people: 3.60 bn average for June 2026 (3.58 bn for December 2025)
• Headcount: 78,865 at 31 December 2025 → 75,472 at 30 June 2026
• Capital expenditures: US$72.22 bn in 2025 → US$130-145 bn guided for 2026
• Reality Labs operating loss: US$4.50 bn (2019), US$10.19 bn (2021), US$16.12 bn (2023), US$19.19 bn (2025). Summing Meta's own segment disclosures, roughly US$97 bn cumulatively through H1 2026

Influence and Criticism

Meta's largest structural legacy is an advertising market financed by free services and personal data. In the decade since Cambridge Analytica, that structure has been enclosed by GDPR, the DMA, the DSA and the EU AI Act, and the enforcement has come on two fronts: the EUR 798 million Article 102 decision on Facebook Marketplace in November 2024 and the EUR 200 million DMA decision on the "subscription for no ads" model in April 2025, both under appeal. The central antitrust case, however, Meta won. On 18 November 2025 Judge Boasberg held that the FTC had not shown Meta currently holds monopoly power once TikTok and YouTube are counted in the market — a remedy aimed at unwinding acquisitions more than a decade old failed at the definition of the market itself.

The other open question is capital discipline. Reality Labs has never turned an operating profit in any year Meta has disclosed the segment, and the cumulative loss reaches roughly US$97 billion by mid-2026. Meanwhile the weight of investment has shifted to AI: 2026 capex guidance is about double 2025's, and long-term debt stood at US$83.66 billion on 30 June 2026. Where Microsoft and Google can point to cloud backlog behind their AI spending, Meta has one revenue source — advertising. Capital expenditure running ahead of any contracted demand is the risk specific to this company.