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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company's apps collectively see over 3.1 billion daily users as the tech firm plots its AI push this year.
"We estimate that there are more than 3.1 billion people who use at least one of our apps each day," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post recapping Meta's quarterly earnings call Thursday.
Meta is home to numerous popular apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, and its former namesake, Facebook. It also owns the virtual reality (VR) firm formerly known as Oculus, which makes VR headsets like the Meta Quest 2 and newer Meta Quest 3.
Earlier this week, a Meta rep confirmed to PCMag that Threads has seen over 100 million users sign up for its Twitter alternative.
Given how many users are downloading Meta apps on a daily basis, Zuckerberg's announcement isn't too surprising. According to Appfigures data, Instagram saw over 700,000 downloads per day in the past month on the Google Play Store. While iOS WhatsApp downloads remained around 250,000 daily downloads last month, Google Play WhatsApp downloads were significantly higher overall by comparison. Over 1.3 million Google Play users downloaded WhatsApp on Jan. 4 alone, for example.
Meta has also held its top spot in the social media industry for a long time, reaching 1 billion monthly active users on Facebook a decade ago.
In the Thursday earnings call, Zuckerberg again dubbed 2023 Meta's "year of efficiency" and said it's led to higher revenue growth for the company.
This year, Meta plans to develop artificial intelligence-powered tools like an AI assistant, AI customer support bots for businesses, and an open-source AI tool for engineers. Zuckerberg also called open-source software infrastructure "something we believe in deeply."
"This next generation of services requires building full general intelligence," Zuckerberg said of AI, referring to the theoretical concept of an artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that promises far broader applications than current models like ChatGPT.
"We're going to need our models to be able to reason, plan, code, remember, and many other cognitive abilities in order to provide the best versions of the services that we envision," he added.