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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., arrives for the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

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Meta AI will soon become one of the social media company’s standalone apps, joining Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, CNBC has learned.

The company intends to debut a Meta AI standalone app during the second quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. It marks a major step in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to make his company the leader in artificial intelligence by the end of the year, ahead of competitors such as OpenAI and Alphabet, said the people, who asked not to be named because the project is confidential.

The Meta AI chatbot launched in September 2023, with the company pitching it as a generative AI-powered digital assistant that can provide responses and create images based on user prompts within its existing apps. The company brought Meta AI to the forefront of its apps in April, when it replaced the search feature for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger with the chatbot. 

Meta AI has since become the primary method for Zuckerberg to showcase his company’s generative AI technologies to billions of consumers.

“This 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,” Zuckerberg told analysts during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January.

Unlike competing generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, Meta AI is currently only available to users via a website and the company’s apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Although Meta’s vast user base across its family of apps can access Meta AI, users could potentially interact more deeply with the digital assistant if it were available as a standalone app, the people said.

In January, Zuckerberg publicly agreed with a Threads user who said Meta should create a standalone mobile app for its digital assistant.

The Threads user wrote that a separate Meta AI app could help the company unify the digital assistant across smartphones and different hardware platforms such as the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, help users organize their conversational histories with the digital assistant and allow for “Deeper personalization and customization.”

Zuckerberg responded to the Threads user with a red “100” emoji, often used in online chatter to convey wholehearted agreement.

Meta also plans to test a paid subscription service for Meta AI, similar to the way OpenAI and Microsoft charge users monthly fees to access more powerful versions of their respective ChatGPT and Copilot chatbots, the people said.

Meta finance chief Susan Li told analysts in January that while the company’s Meta AI efforts are focused on “building a great consumer experience,” there are “pretty clear monetization opportunities here over time, including paid recommendations and including a premium offering.”

The company declined to comment.

Shortly after this story was published, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman slyly said in an X post, “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.”

Meta’s push to be the top AI company

Li told analysts in January that Meta AI has roughly 700 million active monthly users, up from 600 million in December.

Still, analysts have found it difficult to directly compare Meta AI’s usage with that of ChatGPT and other rivals because it isn’t available as an individual app. 

David Curry, the data editor for insights firm Business of Apps, told CNBC in December that the Meta AI standalone website generates less than 10 million views per month, which he said was “far below the major services (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc) and even lower than some mid-range players like Anthropic.”

India is the “largest market for Meta AI usage,” Li told analysts in July. That coincided with signs of retention and engagement on WhatsApp, Li added. In January, Li said WhatsApp experiences the most Meta AI usage, followed by Facebook, which is generating “strong engagement from our feed deep-dives integration that lets people ask Meta AI questions about the content that is recommended to them.”

Meta’s planned debut of a standalone Meta AI app follows similar efforts by Google and Elon Musk’s xAI. The two recently released individual apps for their respective digital assistants Gemini and Grok.

Google said in November that users could download a dedicated iOS app for its Gemini assistant, following the chatbot’s debut as an Android app in February 2024. Last week, the company removed the ability for iOS users to access Gemini through the Google mobile app, telling them, “To continue using Gemini, download the new Gemini app from the App Store.”

In January, xAI debuted an official Grok iOS app along with a dedicated website, expanding the digital assistant beyond Musk’s social media service, X. People who want to access Grok as an Android app must currently join a waitlist.

ChatGPT continues to be the most popular AI-powered digital app as measured by app downloads, according to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2025 report, released in January. The top generative AI chatbot apps were ChatGPT, followed by Google Gemini, ByteDance’s Doubao and Microsoft’s Copilot, according to the report. 

Zuckerberg has been increasingly putting pressure on Meta’s generative AI teams to improve its products, including Meta AI, which he wants to be the most-used chat app in the world by the end of the year, sources said.

Multiple employees working on the efforts said there is pressure to work seven days a week to keep pace in the AI race. 

“Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies of the world. AI, glasses as the next computing platform and the future of social media,” Zuckerberg told employees in a January memo announcing layoffs. “This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams.”

— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.

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Bitcoin hits over 3-month low, reversing gains post Trump election

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Bitcoin hits over 3-month low, reversing gains post Trump election

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

A week-long rout in Bitcoin worsened Friday, with the digital asset hitting an over 3-month low, reversing gains that followed the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bitcoin was trading at about $80,500 in early trading in Asia, down 3.45% on the day and nearly 25% lower than an all-time high hit in mid December.

Bitcoin had enjoyed a surge in prices following Trump’s victory in November, with the leader having posed himself as a pro-crypto candidate during his campaign.

However, prices have slipped as investors shun assets perceived to be risky given the weakness in global equity markets, uncertainty surrounding the new President’s tariff policy and resolutions to major wars such as Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.

Investor sentiment was also soured by news that Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a $1.5 billion hack in what’s estimated to be the largest crypto heist in history.

“It seems that the market has become volatile in reaction to the Bybit incident,” Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at crypto exchange BTSE said in a statement sent to CNBC, adding that inflation concerns and a pause in Fed rate cuts in the U.S. have also suppressed markets.

Still, some crypto bulls remain positive on Bitcoin’s outlook as they await key regulatory developments from the Trump administration.

Already, Trump has signed an executive order promoting the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and developing a national digital asset stockpile. Meanwhile, his administration has created task forces and a “crypto czar” tasked with supporting a clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.

Bitcoin to hit $500,000 before Trump leaves office, Standard Chartered says

Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday that bitcoin could surpass the $200,000 threshold this year.

Increased crypto adoption by institutions along with some “regulatory clarity” in the U.S., should lead to less volatility over time, he said.

—CNBC’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report

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House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Alphabet, Meta, other tech giants over ‘foreign censorship’ of speech

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House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Alphabet, Meta, other tech giants over 'foreign censorship' of speech

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is interviewed by FOX and Friends at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent subpoenas to eight technology companies asking for more information about their communications with foreign governments over concerns that they seek to “censor speech” in the U.S.

The subpoenas were sent Wednesday to the CEOs of Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and TikTok, as well as X and video platform Rumble.

“The Committee must understand how and to what extent foreign governments have limited Americans’ access to lawful speech in the United States, as well as the extent to which the Biden-Harris Administration aided or abetted these efforts,” Jordan said in a statement.

CNBC reached out to each of the subpoenaed companies for comment. A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company is engaged with the panel and “committed to working in good faith.”

A Rumble spokesperson said it “has received the subpoena and we look forward to sharing information related to the ongoing efforts of numerous governments around the globe who seek to suppress the innate human right to self expression.”

Jordan pointed to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a similar set of laws in the U.K., called the Online Services Act, and regulations around illegal content and hate speech in Brazil and Australia.

The committee is seeking communications around the companies’ compliance with “foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders or other government-initiated efforts” and any internal correspondence discussing those matters.

The subpoenas come after the Federal Trade Commission last week launched an inquiry into “tech censorship.” FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said in a statement that the probe will help the agency “better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”

The FTC’s request for public comment defines tech platforms as companies that provide a range of services, from social media and video sharing to event planning and ride sharing.

The Republican-led committee has previously accused major tech companies of censorship. The panel subpoenaed Alphabet, Meta and other firms in 2023, demanding they turn over communications between the companies and the U.S. government over censorship concerns.

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Autodesk says it will cut 1,350 employees, or 9% of workforce, to make the most of sales changes

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Autodesk says it will cut 1,350 employees, or 9% of workforce, to make the most of sales changes

Andrew Anagnost, chief executive officer of Autodesk Inc., during a Bloomberg Television interview in London, UK, on April 25, 2023.

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Design software maker Autodesk said Thursday that it will lay off 1,350 employees, which works out to 9% of its workforce.

The job cuts follow a series of large headcount reductions across the tech industry.

In January, Meta said it would let go of 5% of its workers, and earlier this month Workday, which sells human resources and finance software, announced an 8.5% decrease. Google this week also announced cuts to its human relations and cloud divisions, CNBC reported, and PC maker HP said in a Thursday regulatory filing that it would reduce its headcount by 1,000 or 2,000, representing under 4% of total headcount.

“Our GTM model has evolved significantly from the transition to subscription and multi-year contracts billed annually to self-service enablement, the adoption of direct billing, and more,” Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost wrote in a memo to employees. “These changes position us to better meet the evolving needs of our customers and channel partners. To fully benefit from these changes, we are beginning the transformation of our GTM organization to increase customer satisfaction and Autodesk’s productivity.”

The company is also conducting the layoffs to stay competitive in the current economy and protect the company’s leadership in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, Anagnost wrote.

San Francisco-based Autodesk will make facility reductions as well. But it will not close any offices, a spokesperson told CNBC in an email. It expects $135 million to $150 million in restructuring costs before taxes.

The company on Thursday also announced better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company delivered $2.29 in adjusted earnings per share on $1.64 billion in revenue, which was up 12% year over year. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had been looking for $2.14 per share and $1.63 billion in revenue.

For the fiscal first quarter, Autodesk called for $2.14 to $2.17 in adjusted earnings per share on $1.600 billion to $1.610 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.08 per share and $1.598 billion in revenue.

Management sees $9.34 to $9.67 in adjusted earnings per share for the 2026 fiscal year, with $6.895 billion to $6.965 billion in revenue. The LSEG consensus was $9.24 per share and $6.902 billion in revenue.

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