Meta Platforms was founded as Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. The social network grew explosively, reaching 1 billion users by 2012 — the year it went public in one of the largest tech IPOs ever.
The company rebranded to Meta in 2021 to reflect Zuckerberg’s bet on the metaverse and virtual/augmented reality. Despite the rebrand, the core business remains its “Family of Apps”: Facebook (3+ billion monthly users), Instagram (2+ billion), WhatsApp (2+ billion), and Messenger.
Meta’s revenue comes almost entirely from advertising, which brought in over $131 billion in 2023. The company’s ad targeting capabilities, built on vast user data, make it the second-largest digital advertising platform after Google. Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels have become significant engagement drivers as the company competes with TikTok.
Reality Labs, Meta’s hardware and metaverse division, has burned through over $40 billion in cumulative losses. Products include the Quest VR headsets (formerly Oculus, acquired in 2014 for $2 billion) and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses partnership with EssilorLuxottica.
In AI, Meta has invested heavily in open-source models. The LLaMA family of large language models has been widely adopted by the research and developer community. Meta AI, the company’s consumer-facing assistant, is being embedded across all its apps.
Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Meta employs roughly 67,000 people after significant layoffs in 2022-2023. Zuckerberg controls the company through a dual-class share structure.
