On Tuesday, during a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta Platforms, Inc.’s META artificial intelligence future will cater to both billions of free users and a group willing to pay big for powerful digital agents.
What Happened: In a conversation with podcast host Dwarkesh Patel, which was posted on social media on Tuesday, Zuckerberg outlined how he sees AI being monetized — and it's not just about digital ads.
While acknowledging the power of advertising to support free consumer-facing AI tools, Zuckerberg made it clear that other models, especially paid services, will play a major role.
"There's going to be all these different applications, and different applications tend toward different things," Zuckerberg said. "Ads are great when you want to offer people a free service… They can get something that is amazing for free."
However, Zuckerberg noted that not every AI use case will work within the ad-supported model, especially those that require heavy computing.
"Not everyone is going to want a software engineer, or a thousand software engineering agents, or whatever it is. But if you do, that's something you're probably going to be willing to pay thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars for," he said.
Zuckerberg compared it to how people pay for Netflix or ESPN because the production costs are too high to be covered by ads alone. "You just need to pay to access it. The trade-off is fewer people do it… There's a value switch there."
He added that Meta will likely support both models — a free, ad-funded offering for the masses, and a premium, compute-intensive tier for those who need more power.
“I’m sure we’ll end up having a premium service. But I think our basic values on this are that we want to serve as many people in the world as possible,” he concluded.
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Why It's Important: Meta is expected to showcase its advancements in AI as it releases its first-quarter earnings after the market closes on Wednesday.
Wall Street analysts project Meta will report revenue of $41.39 billion for the quarter, an increase from $36.45 billion in the same period last year. The company has outperformed revenue expectations for 10 consecutive quarters.
Just a day ahead of its earnings release, Meta held its inaugural Gen-AI developer conference, LlamaCon. A key announcement from the event was the launch of Meta AI, an AI assistant that could rival ChatGPT and is expected to have its own standalone app.
Price Action: Meta's stock is down 7.48% so far in 2025 but remains up 28.89% over the past 12 months. On Tuesday, shares gained 0.85% during regular trading hours, but dipped 0.83% in premarket trading on Wednesday, falling to $549.82, according to Benzinga Pro.
In Benzinga Edge's Stock Rankings, Meta holds a growth score of 75.06% and a momentum score of 78.98%. Click here to see how it stacks up against its competitors.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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