WhatsApp is now used by more than 3 billion people every month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during its first quarter conference call on Wednesday.
Founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, WhatsApp remains free to use and does not display any ads. The app reached the 2 billion monthly active users mark back in 2020, but with its latest achievement, it has become one of the few apps to cross the 3 billion user mark besides Facebook.
Such a huge user base makes WhatsApp a key business for Meta, especially now that the company has bet on an artificial intelligence strategy. The company has previously stated that the app is one of the largest platforms for distributing AI services.
“We see people interacting with Meta AI from several different entry points. WhatsApp continues to see the highest usage of Meta AI across our family of apps,” said Susan Li, Meta’s CFO, during the conference call. She also noted that most WhatsApp users interact with Meta AI in one-to-one chats.
Zuckerberg noted that while WhatsApp provides easy access to AI features, Meta had to take a different approach to accelerate the adoption of its AI products in markets such as the US, where most people still prefer to use standard messaging apps on their phones to send texts to each other. This is where the recently released Meta AI app comes in.
“We hope to eventually become the leader [in the U.S. messaging market], but we’re in a different position than most of the rest of the world with WhatsApp. So I think the Meta AI app as a standalone app is going to be particularly important to establishing leadership in the United States – as the primary personal AI that people use. But we’re going to continue to improve our expertise in all of these different areas,” he said.
The company said the business platform of the chat app WhatsApp Business is growing and accounts for a significant portion of the $510 million in revenue generated by the app family.
Meta has been testing artificial intelligence tools for WhatsApp Business, and on Wednesday, Li said the company is developing a new AI agent management interface and dashboard that will allow companies to train Meta’s AI on their information. This information can include a company’s website, WhatsApp profile, or Instagram and Facebook pages. The company is also testing the ability for businesses to activate the Meta AI chatbot in customer chats.
