Microsoft: revenues up but not enough. Meta: profit up 9% and the stock market celebrates

The change of pace reflects the strategy outlined by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who aims at a strong expansion of the global infrastructure. On the agenda are new data centres in different areas of the world, the launch of next-generation artificial intelligence models and an ever-deeper integration of Ai into the advertising business, which remains at the heart of the group's revenues. "In 2025 we have rebuilt the foundation of our artificial intelligence programme," Zuckerberg explained during the call with analysts and investors. "In the coming months we will start releasing new models and products. The first results will be solid, but more importantly they will show the speed of the path we've taken."

On closer inspection, however, what must have - among other things - pleased the operators is the continued solidity of the core business. Revenues from the advertising business rose to EUR 58.137 billion in the last quarter, while for the whole of last year, advertising revenues jumped to EUR 196.175 billion. And that is what the market wants to see. Nessus Pindaric flight on the metaverse (which, incidentally, marks an operating loss in 2025 of 19.2 billion), but rather the expansion of the traditional business. Obviously, also thanks to Artificial Intelligence, which efficiencies and allows costs to be reduced for the same revenue.

In this sense, the group is strengthening its managerial and industrial structure to support the Ai race itself. Earlier this month, the appointment of Dina Powell McCormick, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, as president was announced, with the task of building partnerships with governments to finance and develop data centres globally.

On the energy front, Meta launched the Meta Compute initiative, designed to ensure the electrical capacity needed to support both artificial intelligence models and social platforms. "We plan to build tens of gigawatts over the course of this decade and hundreds of gigawatts, or more, over time," Zuckerberg wrote on Threads, emphasising that infrastructure design and implementation will become a structural competitive advantage.

The market's attention now remains focused on the concrete results of the new Artificial Intelligence organisation. Almost eight months have passed since Meta's entry with a 49% stake in Scale Ai and the appointment of its founder Alexandr Wang as Chief Ai Officer. The group has not yet unveiled a successor to Llama 4, the model released last spring that had failed to convince and led to a profound restructuring that culminated in the creation of Superintelligence Labs. According to internal rumours, however, a new release is imminent. During a company meeting in December, Wang indicated that models codenamed Avocado and Mango could see the light of day in the first half of the year.

Meanwhile, Meta also continued to move on the acquisition front, acquiring Singapore-based artificial intelligence start-up Manus for more than USD 2 billion, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, shortly after securing a legal victory against the Federal Trade Commission on the antitrust front.

The reorganisation also affected the scope of activities. The group reduced the teams related to the metaverse, cutting about 10 per cent of the 1,500-strong Reality Labs workforce, reallocating resources towards the development of Ai glasses, which are considered more promising in terms of commercial traction.