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Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., wears a pair of Meta Oakley Vanguard AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta’s AI app has seen a major jolt in downloads since launching its Vibes feed of AI-generated videos, giving investors a glimpse of the company’s artificial intelligence strategy ahead of Wednesday’s third-quarter earnings.

Since releasing Vibes on Sept. 25, the Meta AI app’s downloads on both iOS and Android are up 56% month-to-month to a total of 3.9 million downloads as of Oct. 18, according to data provided to CNBC by mobile research firm Appfigures.

“That’s what I’d call standout growth,” said Appfigures Head of Insights Randy Nelson, adding that “the month’s not even over.”

Still, OpenAI’s rival Sora app, which launched Sept. 30, appears to have more momentum despite only being available on Apple’s iOS platform and requiring an invitation for use. From Sept. 30 through Oct. 18, Sora saw 2.6 million downloads on iOS, compared to the 1.1 million downloads of the Meta AI app, according to Appfigures.

Sora’s early popularity isn’t surprising to nearly a dozen creators, marketers and brand agencies that spoke with CNBC about about their interest and use of the AI tools.

Meta declined to comment.

We tested OpenAI’s Sora 2 AI-video app to find out why Hollywood is worried

Creators and marketers say they generally find Sora easier to use. Among the key distinctions is Sora’s capability of producing more realistic looking videos that show people talking, while Vibes only lets users choose select songs as accompanying audio.

The Vibes feed is filled with surreal, playful content, ranging from four lions sharing a pizza in the jungle to a hedgehog singing karaoke.

Meta has been paying creators to produce AI-generated videos for Vibes as a way to boost the visibility of the app, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Meta has sought out influencers who specialize in generative AI tools provided by the startup Midjourney, and is requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements, according to the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to comment on the matter.

Meta’s evolving AI strategy

The Facebook parent debuted the Meta AI app in late April, confirming an earlier CNBC report. The app was originally called Meta View and was used by owners of the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses to manage their device settings, import photos and perform other utility functions.

The app, which is still used to manage Ray-Ban Meta glasses, was relaunched as Meta AI to serve as the company’s hub for users to interact with the social media firm’s ChatGPT-like AI assistant, but the September launch of Vibes added a video feed component similar to that of TikTok. The key difference is that all of the content found on the Vibes feed has been created entirely by AI generators.

Unlike Sora, which is powered by OpenAI’s proprietary model, Meta AI’s Vibes feature relies on models provided by third parties like Midjourney and Black Forest Labs, according to a Threads post last month from Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer and the former CEO of Scale AI. Meta is also developing its own internal generative AI technology, Wang wrote.

Meta’s reliance on third-party AI models to power Vibes underscores the company’s newfound willingness to seek outside help as it tries to get its AI technology back on track. The underwhelming launch of Llama 4 in April spurred CEO Mark Zuckerberg into spending billions of dollars to shake up Meta’s AI organization and install new leaders like Wang, CNBC previously reported.

That overhaul continued last week, when Meta laid off 600 employees in its AI organization. The company spared Wang’s core TBD Labs group, which now overseas touchstone AI efforts like Llama.

Meta’s AI strategy is sure to be a major topic in the company’s third-quarter earnings report and investor call on Wednesday. For the quarter, analysts expect revenue growth of 22% from a year earlier to $49.4 billion, according to LSEG. Wall Street expects revenue growth for the full year of 19% to $196.2 million.

Meta Vibes

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Some of the influencers that Meta is paying to populate Vibes are based in India, where Sora is not yet available and TikTok is banned. 

Company executives have previously said that Meta AI usage, largely accessed via the company’s WhatsApp service, is the highest India, the world’s most-populous country, even though not all influencers there get paid.

“One of the biggest reasons that got me excited is because I’ve been in the creator ecosystem for almost 15 years now,” said Gaurav Bisen, a creator from India who posts 10 to 15 times a day on Vibes but isn’t paid by Meta. “Creating content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube takes a lot of time, energy and investment. But here, it’s so easy. You just type a prompt.”

Bisen said he’s found early traction on Vibes, where his following has grown to more than 25,000. He said he’s learned that short, animated dance clips perform best.

“People who didn’t have the confidence to come in front of a camera can now create from their imagination,” Bisen said. “You can produce creative content without even being in it.”

Still, engagement on Vibes remains limited compared to Instagram or TikTok. Most creators told CNBC that their posts average fewer than 10 likes and almost no comments.

Instead, Vibes users measure success through “remixes” – a feature that lets creators take an AI-generated video, edit the prompt and repost it as their own.

“Remixes kind of seem like the currency on the app,” said Dylan McIntyre, who runs the AI video account JunkBoxAI on Instagram, where he has more than 1.3 million followers but just 22,000 on Vibes. “People are liking what they’re seeing and want to make their own and repost it.”

Meta is leaning heavily into generative AI as it courts creators and competes with OpenAI. Its AI Studio tool lets users build customizable AI characters and chat with them across Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Investors will also be listening for commentary on the company’s Metaverse strategy.

Meta confirmed on Monday that Vishal Shah, who spent the past four years leading metaverse initiatives, is now helping run AI products as part of the company’s Superintelligence Labs division, which is led by recent high-profile hires, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

Shah, who will now report to Friedman, was previously a vice president of product at Instagram. The Financial Times first reported on Shah’s new position.

WATCH: Partnership with Meta for smart glasses helps lift EssilorLuxottica sales.

Partnership with Meta for smart glasses helps lift EssilorLuxottica sales by 11.7%

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CNBC Daily Open: It’s a boom, it’s a bubble, it’s still not enough for investors: It’s AI

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CNBC Daily Open: It's a boom, it's a bubble, it's still not enough for investors: It's AI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (L) speaks with Microsoft Chief Technology Officer and Executive VP of Artificial Intelligence Kevin Scott during the Microsoft Build conference at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on May 21, 2024. 

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Investors can’t get enough of artificial intelligence, despite worries over the sector’s excessively high valuations.

The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite rose Tuesday stateside, with all three notching new intraday highs. The major averages were juiced by gains in tech. Nvidia popped nearly 5%, while Microsoft climbed roughly 2%.

Both Apple and Microsoft reached a market capitalization of over $4 trillion after their shares rose. It was the first time Apple hit that milestone, though it closed just shy of that level.

Tech companies can’t get enough of each other, either.

Nvidia announced a $1 trillion investment in Nokia, which the Finnish company said will go toward developing its AI plans. For those, like me, who remember Nokia as a company that made the most desirable and bullet-proof phones: It primarily produces cellular equipment now.

Meanwhile, with its 27% stake in OpenAI’s for-profit business, Microsoft is potentially sitting on a goldmine — provided AI finds its footing as a sustainable, revenue-generating business in the long run. OpenAI on Tuesday announced it had completed its restructuring as a nonprofit with a controlling stake in its for-profit arm.

It’s not just Microsoft. Investors who have poured money into tech could potentially gain big — as Cathie Wood of Ark Invest says, “If our expectations for AI … are correct, we are at the very beginning of a technology revolution.”

What you need to know today

And finally…

Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Fall meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Fed has a rate cut plus a bunch of other things on its plate this week. Here’s what to expect

Markets are assigning a nearly 100% probability that the Federal Open Market Committee will approve a second consecutive quarter percentage point, or 25 basis point, reduction in the federal funds rate. The overnight lending benchmark is currently targeted between 4%-4.25%.

Beyond that, policymakers are likely to debate, among other things, the future path of reductions, the challenges posed by a lack of economic data and the timetable for ending the reduction in the Fed’s asset portfolio of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.

— Jeff Cox

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Nvidia-supplier SK Hynix third-quarter profit jumps 62% to a record high on AI-fueled memory demand

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Nvidia-supplier SK Hynix third-quarter profit jumps 62% to a record high on AI-fueled memory demand

A man walks past a logo of SK Hynix at the lobby of the company’s Bundang office in Seongnam on January 29, 2021.

Jung Yeon-Je | AFP | Getty Images

South Korea’s SK Hynix on Wednesday posted record quarterly revenue and profit, boosted by a strong demand for its high bandwidth memory used in generative AI chipsets.

Here are SK Hynix’s third-quarter results versus LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

  • Revenue: 24.45 trillion won ($17.13 billion) vs. 24.73 trillion won
  • Operating profit: 11.38 trillion won vs. 11.39 trillion won

Revenue rose about 39% in the September quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit surged 62%, year on year.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue was up 10%, while operating profit grew 24%.

SK Hynix makes memory chips that are used to store data and can be found in everything from servers to consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops.

The company has benefited from a boom in artificial intelligence as a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory or HBM chips used to power AI data center servers. 

“As demand across the memory segment has soared due to customers’ expanding investments in AI infrastructure, SK Hynix once again surpassed the record-high performance of the previous quarter due to increased sales of high value-added products,” SK Hynix said in its earnings release. 

HBM falls into the broader category of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM — a type of semiconductor memory used to store data and program code that can be found in PCs, workstations and servers.

SK Hynix has set itself apart in the DRAM market by getting an early lead in HBM and establishing itself as the main supplier to the world’s leading AI chip designer, Nvidia

However, its main competitors, U.S.-based Micron and South Korean-based tech giant Samsung, have been working to catch up in the space.

“With the innovation of AI technology, the memory market has shifted to a new paradigm and demand has begun to spread to all product areas,” SK Hynix Chief Financial Officer Kim Woohyun said in the earnings release.

“We will continue to strengthen our AI memory leadership by responding to customer demand through market-leading products and differentiated technological capabilities,” he added.

The HBM market is expected to continue to boom over the next few years to around $43 billion by 2027, giving strong earnings leverage to memory manufacturers such as SK Hynix, MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

“[F]or SK Hynix to continue generating profits, it’ll be important for the company to maintain and enhance its competitive edge,” he added.

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month showed that SK Hynix held a leading 38% share of the DRAM market by revenue in the second quarter of the year, increasing its shares after having overtaken Samsung in the first quarter. 

The report added that the global HBM  market grew 178% year over year in the second quarter, and SK Hynix dominated the space with a 64% share.

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Celestica CEO explains the company’s role in the AI boom

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Celestica CEO explains the company's role in the AI boom

Celestica CEO Rob Mionis: If AI is a speeding freight train, we’re laying the tracks ahead of it

Celestica CEO Rob Mionis explained how his company designs and manufactures infrastructure that enables artificial intelligence in a Tuesday interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

“If AI is a speeding freight train, we’re laying the tracks ahead of the freight train,” Mionis said.

He pushed back against the notion that the AI boom is a bubble, saying that the technology has gone from a “nice to have” to a “must have.”

Celestica reported earnings Monday after close, managing to beat estimates and raise its full-year outlook. The stock hit a 52-week high during Tuesday’s session and closed up more than 8%. Celestica has had a huge run over the past several months, and shares are currently up 253.68% year-to-date.

Mionis described some of Celestica’s business strategies, including how the Canadian outfit chose to move away from commodity markets and into design and manufacturing. He told Cramer that choice “has paid off in spades” for his company.

Celestica’s focus on design and manufacturing enables the company to “consistently execute at scale,” he added.

He detailed Celestica’s data center work, saying the company makes high-speed networking and storage system for hyperscalers, digital native companies and other enterprise names.

Mionis praised the company’s partnership with semiconductor maker Broadcom, saying Celestica uses Broadcom’s silicon in a lot of its designs.

“What it means for us is when they launch a new piece of silicon — so the Tomahawk 6 is their 1.6 terabyte silicon — when they launch that into the marketplace, they’ll work with us to develop products, and those products end up in the major hyperscalers.”

Celestica CEO Rob Mionis goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer

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