Mark Zuckerberg’s plan is to make Meta the market leader in artificial intelligence. Investors will want to know how President Donald Trump’s tariffs-heavy trade policies will impact that strategy. 

Those answers could start to come as soon as this week as Meta’s AI strategy takes center stage when the company hosts its first Llama-branded conference for AI developers on Tuesday then reports its latest quarterly earnings the next day.

Already, tech companies are starting to talk about the potential impact they’re bracing for as a result of the Trump tariffs. 

Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said Thursday during the chip giant’s first-quarter earnings call that U.S. trade policies “have increased the chance of an economic slowdown, with the probability of a recession growing.” Meanwhile, Google CFO Anat Ashkenazi said that day during a first-quarter earnings call that the tech giant remains committed to its $75 billion investment in capital expenditures, or capex, this year, but also acknowledged that the “timing of deliveries and construction schedules” could cause some quarter-to-quarter spending fluctuation. 

For now, analysts expect Meta to follow Alphabet’s lead and remain firm in its plan to spend as much as $65 billion in capex for AI infrastructure this year when it reports earnings Wednesday. Some analysts believe Meta could even raise the figure because AI is a core priority for the company.

“We do not expect META to cut its CapX guidance of $60B-$65B in 2025, for its GenAI infrastructure,  because they see this as an important 10-year investment, we believe,” Needham analysts wrote in a research note published Wednesday. “However, tariffs add risks of upward cost revisions.”

Investors will also be monitoring Meta’s LlamaCon event at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters for any signs that its AI investments are having an immediate business impact. This will be the first time Meta hosts a developer conference specifically for its Llama family of AI models.

“Investors want to see ROI on all these AI investments, and while Meta has shown clear benefits from leveraging AI to improve its products and drive faster revenue growth, it’s been hard to quantify those benefits,” Truist Securities analyst Youssef Squali told CNBC.

Meta in April released a couple of its new Llama 4 models, which Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox previously said can help power so-called AI agents that can perform tasks for users via web browsers and other online interfaces.

It’s critical that Meta keep improving Llama to create a major business involving AI agents that companies can use to interact with their customers within apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, William Blair research analyst Ralph Schackart said.

“Meta has an early mover advantage at scale in a multi-trillion dollar market,” Schackart said in an email. “We believe Meta is very well positioned to leverage its billions of global users across multiple platforms.”

Meta is unlikely to curb its Llama investment any time soon, but should eventually consider doing so if it fails to generates enough money to justify its costs, said Ken Gawrelski, a Wells Fargo managing director of equity research.

“We do believe that over time Meta needs to continue to evaluate whether Llama needs to be competitive with the leading-edge models,” Gawrelski said. “This is a very expensive proposition and thus far, unlike Google, Meta does not directly monetize its model in any material way.”

Analysts are also following the Meta AI digital assistant. That’s because the ChatGPT rival represents the second pillar of Zuckerberg‘s AI strategy. 

Zuckerberg in January said he believes 2025 “is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant.”

In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid subscription service, in which users could pay monthly fees to access more powerful versions like users can with ChatGPT. 

Although Meta’s enormous user base across its family of apps gives Meta AI an advantage over rivals like ChatGPT in terms of reach, they may not interact with Meta AI in the same way they do with rival chat apps, said Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Deepak Mathivanan.

Gawrelski said that people may not want to use Meta AI within Facebook and Instagram if all they want to do is passively watch the short videos that Meta algorithmically recommends to their feeds.

“This is why a separate Meta AI, where Meta could clearly articulate its use case and value proposition, could be helpful,” Gawrelski said.

A standalone Meta AI app could help the company better market the digital assistant and distinguish it from rivals, said Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst for Sonata Insights.

“ChatGPT has such wide brand awareness, that it’s become a moat that is soon going to be very hard to overcome,” Williamson said.

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.