Meta's Big Bet on AI: Is It Worth the Risk?

Meta, the company behind Facebook, is spending a ton of money on AI. The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said they will spend between $70 billion and $72 billion this year. That's a lot more than they thought they would spend before. Investors are not happy about this. They think Meta is spending too much money without seeing enough results. This made the company's stock price drop by more than 11 percent. Even though Meta made more money than expected, investors are worried about all the money being spent on AI. One investor, Brian Mulberry, said that Meta needs to show how this spending will pay off. He is not sure if Meta can turn all this money into profits. He also said that Meta is not being clear about what they are doing with all this money. This is making investors even more worried.Other big tech companies like Alphabet and Microsoft are also spending a lot on AI. This is making some people think there might be a bubble in the AI industry. If this bubble bursts, it could be bad for the whole US economy. Microsoft also had a similar problem. They reported good results, but their stock still dropped because they said they would spend more money. Zuckerberg thinks that Meta needs to spend a lot now to stay ahead. He said they are seeing some returns, but they need to keep investing. Meta has been hiring a lot of people for AI and even bought a startup called Scale AI for $14 billion. They also gave big pay packages to attract talent. But recently, they cut hundreds of jobs in their AI unit. This might mean that things are not going as well as they thought.