AI technology is many things, and one of them is expensive! Major companies are spending billions upon billions of dollars to develop AI technology, and you would think that their investments have paid off. However, that’s not the case, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just put that into perspective. He stated that Meta will not make money from AI for years.
It’s important to know that many business ventures actually don’t make money, even though it seems like they should. For example, Disney+ has over 200 million subscribers. However, the subscription service is not profitable. In fact, it was a $138 million loss at the end of 2023. Even Google’s popular series of Pixel devices have been struggling to make a profit over the years.
The fact of the matter is that many big ventures don’t make a profit at the beginning. A lot of the time, they need to progressively gain customers and paying users over time.
Meta won’t make any money from AI for years
Mark Zuckerberg recently had a meeting with investors talking about the company’s growth and where it’s going. One thing we found out is that Meta has been doing pretty well in terms of Revenue. According to the CEO, the company pulled in more than $12 billion last quarter.
Be that as it may, Meta’s AI endeavors are a big financial loss at this point. The company is spending a ton of money to develop new AI tools, train models, secure GPUs, Etc. “The initial signs are quite positive here.” Zuckerberg said during the call, “But building the leading AI will… be a larger undertaking than the other experiences we’ve added to our apps, and this is likely going to take several years.”
This is something that should not be a huge surprise. Remember, Microsoft invested $13 billion into OpenAI. However, there’s no way that the company has earned $13 billion from Copilot by now.
Mark Zuckerberg also said that tens of millions of people have tried out Meta’s AI assistant ever since it was widely launched last week. So, people are, at least, interested in some of the AI technology that Meta launched.
However, the company is working on ways of monetizing its AI platform. “There are several ways to build a massive business here, including scaling business messaging, introducing ads or paid content into AI interactions, and enabling people to pay to use bigger AI models and access more computers,” Zuckerberg said.
So, it’s clear that the company is looking for ways of monetizing its AI technology. As such, you should expect to see some changes coming to the tools down the road.