Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Tech Close Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Tech AI Close AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All AI Business Close Business Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Follow Follow See All Business Meta lost 20 million users last quarter Zuckerberg is also planning to spend $10 billion more on AI this year than previously expected. Zuckerberg is also planning to spend $10 billion more on AI this year than previously expected. by Jess Weatherbed Close Jess Weatherbed News Reporter Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

Follow Follow See All by Jess Weatherbed Apr 30, 2026, 11:38 AM UTC Link Share Gift Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Jess Weatherbed Close Jess Weatherbed Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Meta is planning to pump billions more into AI investments this year, despite noting that millions of users have seemingly started to abandon its platforms. In an earning call on Wednesday , Meta reported that figures for “Family daily active people” — the term Meta has coined for all collective users of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger — declined by 20 million this quarter compared to the previous three months. Meta attributes this fall to “internet disruptions in Iran, as well as a restriction on access to WhatsApp in Russia .

” It’s up to you whether you take Meta on its word, given that by bundling the user stats together across all its platforms, we can’t tell which ones are most impacted. If I wanted to obscure that a leading social platform was potentially hemorrhaging daily users , that’s certainly what I would do. This drop comes as Meta says it’s increasing its projected capital expenditures for 2026 to a range of $125-145 billion, $10 billion more than previous estimates.

Industry Implications

This increased spending is driven by expectations for higher component pricing and, “to a lesser extent,” additional costs for future data center capacity. This is a course correction, according to Meta’s chief financial officer Susan Li, who said in the investor call that Meta had “underestimated our compute demand in the past. ” Meta’s revenue also experienced its fastest growth since 2021, increasing by 33 percent, from $42.

3 billion this time last year to $56. 3 billion this quarter. Some divisions aren’t doing so hot though — the Reality Labs unit that builds wearables and virtual reality devices reported an operating loss of $4.

03 billion over the three-month quarter, and follows Meta’s Reality Labs employees being hit by two waves of layoffs since January .

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.