Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted Wednesday during the company's first-quarter earnings call that WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly users. WhatsApp was founded in 2009 and was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion. Currently, WhatsApp remains free to use and does not display any ads.
The app had already crossed the 2 billion monthly active user mark back in 2020, and with the latest milestone, it has become one of the few apps besides Facebook to cross the 3 billion user mark.
That massive user base makes WhatsApp a key business for Meta, especially now that the company is betting heavily on its AI strategy. Meta has previously stated that WhatsApp is one of its largest AI service distribution platforms.
"We're seeing people interact with Meta AI from multiple different entry points. WhatsApp continues to have the highest usage of Meta AI of any of our apps," Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said on the call. She also noted that most WhatsApp users interact with Meta AI in one-on-one chats.
Zuckerberg said that while WhatsApp provides convenient AI capabilities, Meta must adopt a different strategy to promote the popularity of its AI products in markets such as the United States, where most people still tend to use the text messaging app that comes with their phones to send messages. That's where the company's newly released Meta AI app comes in.
"We want to be the leader [in the U.S. messaging market] over time, but our position in the U.S. is different from where WhatsApp is in much of the rest of the world. So I think Meta AI, as a standalone app, is critical to establishing leadership in the U.S. — as the primary personal AI that people use. But we're going to continue to improve the user experience across the board in all of these different areas," he said.
The company said WhatsApp Business, the chat app's business platform, is growing and accounts for a large portion of the $510 million in revenue generated by its family of apps.
Meta has been testing AI tools for WhatsApp Business. Robin Li said on Wednesday that the company is building a new AI agent management interface and dashboard that will allow companies to use their own information to train Meta's AI. This information may include business websites, WhatsApp profiles, Instagram and Facebook pages. Additionally, Meta is testing letting businesses activate Meta’s AI chatbot when chatting with customers.