Mark Zuckerberg told the world in Oct. 2021 that he was rebranding Facebook to Meta as the company pushes toward the metaverse.
Facebook | via Reuters
Meta’s top executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, chief product officer Chris Cox and chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth are spending most of their time working on artificial intelligence, according to an interview Bosworth gave to Nikkei Asia Wednesday.
While Bosworth said some of that work will benefit the metaverse — the digital world the company has said it’s working to build — it shows how important AI is to Meta as other large tech companies like Microsoft and Alphabet also invest in the space.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced a product group in February that is focused on generative AI— a new set of machine learning techniques that allow computers to generate text, draw pictures, and create other media that resemble human output. Meta has its own large language model called LLaMa that it said in February it would release to researchers. LLaMa, like competing AI models, is capable of answering questions and summarizing documents.
Meta’s Reality Labs division, which is overseen by Bosworth and is home to the company’s metaverse technologies and projects, posted a $13.72 billion loss in 2022. But digital advertising makes up the bulk of Meta’s revenue. The company reported $116.61 billion in revenue in 2022.
Bosworth told Nikkei that he expects the company will debut some commercial applications using AI this year, and it could help the company’s profit-driving ad business.
For instance, he said companies can use AI to create ads by generating several images that work for different audiences instead of relying on a single-image advertising campaign.
Still, Bosworth told Nikkei that Meta could also use AI in the metaverse.
“In the future, you might be able to just describe the world you want to create and have the large language model generate that world for you,” Bosworth said in the report. “And so it makes things like content creation much more accessible to more people.”
The company hopes to eventually apply its AI technology to all of its services and products, including both Facebook and Instagram, according to the report.
Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The company said it expects third-quarter earnings between $1.36 and $1.60 per share, a midpoint of $1.48 per share. That fell short of an LSEG estimate of $1.50.
Texas Instruments anticipates revenues between $4.45 billion and $4.48 billion. The midpoint of $4.63 billion was slightly ahead of the $4.59 billion expected by analysts.
In an earnings call with analysts, CEO Haviv Ilan said the company is experiencing a “shallow” recovery in the automotive sector and said customers may have lingering worries over tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.
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Despite the post-earnings slump, Texas Instruments posted a 16% year-over-year jump in revenue. The company reported earnings of $1.41 per share on $4.45 billion in revenue, surpassing the earnings of $1.35 per share on $4.36 billion in revenue expected by LSEG analysts.
Ilan said that some of the second-quarter strength may have come from a pull forward in demand to acquire inventory ahead of tariffs.
Net income for the company rose 15% to $1.3 billion, or $1.41 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year ago.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Tesla will report second-quarter results after the close of regular trading on Wednesday.
Here’s what Wall Street expects, according to an average of estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 43 cents
Revenue: $22.74 billion
Revenue in the period is expected to drop 11% from a year earlier, marking a second straight quarterly decline. In early July, Tesla reported a 14% year-over-year slide in vehicle deliveries to 384,000 for the second quarter.
Deliveries are the closest approximation of EV sales reported by Tesla but aren’t precisely defined in its shareholder communications.
Tesla’s slump this year is partly due to a backlash against the company in the U.S. and Europe, after CEO Elon Musk spent heavily to help reelect President Donald Trump, endorsed Germany’s extreme anti-immigrant AfD party, and then led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. At DOGE, Musk helped to slash the federal workforce, roll back regulations, and eliminate USAID.
Other automakers saw their electric vehicle sales increase, eating away at Tesla’s market share during the second quarter.
General Motors’ U.S. sales of EVs rose 111% year-over-year to nearly 46,300 units in the period for an estimated market share of 16%, still far behind Tesla.
Musk’s political activism hasn’t been the only factor weighing on the brand.
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Tesla has put off the production of a more affordable “model 2” EV, while other automakers are now offering a greater variety of vehicles, and China-based competitors are selling affordable EVs with high-tech self-driving features as a standard rather than premium option.
Tesla shares are down about 17% for the year, the worst performance among tech’s megacaps. The Nasdaq is up more than 8% in 2025.
Musk has tried to keep fans and investors focused on Tesla’s future, which he envisions as being dominated by the company’s robotaxis, and humanoid Optimus robots. Musk sees Tesla’s robotaxis as working for their owners, making them money while they sleep. Optimus robots, he says, will be so sophisticated they can serve as factory workers or babysitters.
Tesla opened a diner and charging station in Los Angeles this week, where fans can see the Optimus robots at work on a simple task, slowly scooping popcorn. The company faces massive competition in robotics from developers including 1X Technologies, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI.
In June, Tesla began testing a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, which operates in a limited area with a human valet on board. The service is accessible only to select riders, generally Tesla and Musk enthusiasts.
The robotaxi rollout is seen by bulls as a positive sign for the company, but Bank of America analysts cautioned in a recent report that it would have “immaterial financial ramifications” in the near term.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile, has pressed Tesla for information about reported incidents where the vehicles appeared to violate traffic laws. In one incident, a Tesla robotaxi scraped a parked vehicle at a pizzeria parking lot in Austin, and in another, a robotaxi veered out of its lane briefly into oncoming traffic.
In a note earlier this month, Barclays analysts said Tesla has shown “weak fundamentals” heading into its earnings report. Still, shareholders have remained excited about Tesla’s “robotaxi narrative,” wrote the analysts, who have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock.
Wednesday’s report will be the first for Tesla since Musk officially left his role in the Trump administration and immediately preceded to publicly slam the president, mostly for the Republicans’ spending package that he endorsed.
Musk has since promised to start a new political party in the U.S. which he calls The America Party.
One retail investor submitted an anonymous question via the Say platform, which Tesla uses ahead of earnings calls, to ask, “With Elon Musk now more publicly involved in U.S. politics through the new America Party, is Tesla taking any steps to manage potential risks, whether from shifting political alliances, regulatory perception, or public opinion?”
Most questions submitted to the platform sought updates from Tesla about its robotaxi test in Austin, self-driving ambitions and its plans for a more affordable EV model.
Tesla’s automotive gross margins are also likely to be in focus, along with commentary on how the company will weather Trump’s tariffs and the end of federal tax credits for EV buyers.
Company executives will host an earnings call with analysts at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Jeff Chiu | AP
Alphabet is set to report its second-quarter earnings after the bell Wednesday.
Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:
Revenue: $93.94 billion
Earnings per share: $2.18
Wall Street is also watching these numbers in the report:
YouTube advertising revenue: $9.56 billion, according to StreetAccount
Google Cloud revenue: $13.11 billion, according to StreetAccount
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $14.18 billion, according to StreetAccount
Alphabet is among the megacaps expected to be a major driver of earnings growth during the second-quarter earnings season. Wall Street is anticipating the search giant to report a 10.9% increase in revenue and 15% growth in earnings per share.
Shares of Alphabet haven’t moved much this year, lagging the other Magnificent Seven stocks and the S&P 500. Investors are primarily concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots, which could impact Google’s ability to remain competitive in search.
During the second quarter, the search giant rolled out a number of new AI products.
At its annual Google I/O conference in May, Google announced a new subscription tier, called “Google AI Ultra,” that offers access to the company’s “cutting edge” AI features for $249.99 per month. Google also unveiled its return to the smart glasses market with a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker — the two companies said they plan to launch a series of smart glasses as soon as next year.
Google in May also announced a venture fund to invest in AI startups. As part of the “AI Futures Fund,” eligible startups will receive Googleinvestment, early access to AI models, and hands-on support from Google researchers, engineers and go-to-market specialists. They also get credits to use on Google Cloud.
Additionally in May, Google began testing the placement of its “AI Mode” product on its home page, directly beneath the Google search.
Earlier this month, OpenAI added Google to its list of suppliers, saying it expects to use the search company’s cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT service. The announcement represented a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than those of Amazon and Microsoft.
Google made a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing it would bring in Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and other top researchers at the artificial intelligence coding startup as part of a $2.4 billion deal that also includes licensing the company’s technology.
Internally, Google also made a number of personnel changes during the quarter.
The company added the new role of chief AI architect when it elevated Koray Kavukcuoglu from his position as Google DeepMind’s chief technology officer in June.
Google also made more workforce reductions by offering buyouts to U.S.-based employees across several of its divisions, including search, ads and commerce.
Alphabet made several strides with Waymo, its self-driving car unit, during the quarter.
Waymo reached 100 million “real world, fully autonomous miles” driven on public roads, the company said last week. Waymo also announced expansions into new markets.
In June, Waymo announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. In July, the company said it will do limited testing in Philadelphia and it began offering accounts for teens ages 14 to 17, starting in Phoenix.
The company also endured some less-flattering optics during the quarter.
In June, Google’s cloud suffered significant global outages knocking down or disrupting dozens of large internet services, including OpenAI and Shopify, among others.