Meta

Meta Platforms, Inc., commonly known as Meta, is a dominant force in social media and digital communication. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads. Its advertising network generates the vast majority of revenue, 97.8 percent in 2023, making Meta a core member of Big Tech alongside Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Founded in 2004 as TheFacebook, Inc., it rebranded as Facebook, Inc. in 2005, then adopted the Meta name in 2021 to signal a pivot toward the metaverse, a sprawling digital realm blending virtual and augmented reality. As of 2023, Meta ranked 31st on the Forbes Global 2000 and spent $35.3 billion on research and development, the third-highest R&D budget worldwide.

Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded the company from a Harvard dormitory, serves as CEO and chairman, controlling roughly 58 percent of voting power through a dual-class stock structure. Other key executives include COO Javier Olivan, CFO Susan Li, and CTO Andrew Bosworth, who also heads Reality Labs. The board includes venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Meta's product ecosystem splits into two segments: the Family of Apps and Reality Labs. The Family of Apps includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads, collectively reaching over 3.19 billion daily active people as of Q4 2023. Reality Labs produces VR headsets (Meta Quest, formerly Oculus), AR smart glasses (Ray-Ban Meta), and the Horizon Worlds social platform. Meta also develops the open-source Llama large language model, with Llama 3 released in 2024, and integrates a generative AI assistant across its apps.[edit]