Mark Zuckerberg Pushes Meta Toward Retail Expansion As Internal Memo Reveals Plans To Open Physical Stores: Report

A new internal communications document from Meta Platforms Inc. META shows that the company is about to launch brick-and-mortar locations and hire store staff shortly.

What Happened: Meta's internal memo, reviewed by Business Insider, outlines plans for growing its retail footprint. Currently, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company runs a single store in Burlingame, California, which opened in 2022.

Details about timing and store count are not available at the moment. Earlier, Meta tested the waters with a Los Angeles pop-up featuring its smart glasses.

Why It Matters: A more robust retail presence could enable Meta to compete more strongly with rivals like Apple Inc. AAPL, which has more than 500 stores worldwide.

Meta's hardware line, including Quest VR headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses, could reap the benefit of direct consumer engagement.

Zuckerberg admitted that while smart glasses sold over a million units in 2024, that alone won't "move the needle and the business in a core way." He said 2025 would show whether the product category becomes a "long-term grind" or turns into a "really prominent computing platform."

Another recently-issued internal memo reveals that Meta's products team will be split into two distinct divisions, with an AI-focused team led by Connor Hayes and an AGI Foundations unit led by Ahmad Al-Dahle and Amir Frenkel.

This comes just as Meta's AI assistant reaches one billion monthly active users, according to Zuckerberg's remarks at Wednesday's annual shareholder meeting.

Price Action: At the time of writing, Meta shares were down 0.47% pre-market, after closing 0.23% higher at $645.05 during Thursday's regular trading session, as per Benzinga Pro data.

According to Benzinga Edge rankings, Meta scores 88.04 in momentum, 35.09 in value, 92.83 in growth and 83.63 in quality. Check out Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings to see where it stands in comparison to the other "Magnificent 7" stocks.

Read Next: