Zuckerberg’s master plan: AI everything

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• Zuck, rawdogging life
• Zuck, redefining advertising
• Zuck, making Meta even more valuable

If that’s enough to make Mark Zuckerberg “cool”, read on…

AI Collision 💥

Mark Zuckerberg is a unique cat. I mean that shouldn’t come as any great surprise, considering he’s built a $1.4 trillion conglomerate off the basis of rating hot girls at college and as his sister says to him (according to a recent podcast with Theo Vonn) “you’re raw dogging life.“

That is worth a watch to get more insight into the “cool” rebranding image of Zuckerberg. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Zuckerberg wants to position Meta (NASDAQ:META) and himself at the centre of the AI revolution.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he rebranded Meta again to MetaAI.

In another interview he did on Thursday, he spoke about Meta’s AI ambitions and how he wants to change the advertising industry with Meta’s AI rollout.

He wants to replace media buyers, creative agencies, and maybe even entire marketing divisions, with AI.

And honestly? He might just pull it off.

Beneath all the hype around smart glasses and Llama models is a far more lucrative play. It’s the bread and butter of what makes Meta billions of dollars every year. It’s not just about building the future of AI (although that’s a BIG part of all this) it’s about reclaiming every dollar of Facebook’s original empire…advertising.

On Thursday, Zuckerberg did an interview with Ben Thompson of Stratechery and laid it all out. Businesses shouldn’t have to hire marketing agencies or build ad creative. They should just hand Meta their objective, “I want more sales of this product,” and let AI do the rest.

That could be generating images and video to targeting and testing, Meta’s AI will act as an entire marketing department on autopilot. Tell it what you want and let it do the work, for a cost of course.

But if it works? Every dollar that once went to agencies and media buyers, costs spent on marketing and advertising divisions… now goes to Meta. Or at least, a big chunk goes to Meta, the rest is saved and reinvested into businesses.

It’s a seriously grand plan, a “master plan” if you will. Complete vertical integration of the ad business, wrapped in generative AI and scaled to billions of users. Meta doesn’t just want to run your ads, it wants to make them, test them, refine them and report on them with no humans in the loop.

He’s talking about just plug in, connect your bank account, tell them the business outcomes and let their AI generate, test, target and deliver. As he puts it, “a redefinition of the category of advertising“

It’s a move that should terrify ad agencies, excites small businesses, and could make Meta the most profitable company in the history of media.

But there’s one catch…

Zuckerberg is betting the entire future of Meta on the AI working flawlessly, not just in ads, but across the consumer ecosystem.

These advertising redefinition goals never happen without the AI to do it right. Failure to deliver these business outcomes is a direct threat to the viability of Meta.

Take for instance, Meta’s new standalone AI assistant, powered by Llama 4, just launched inside Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It’s Meta’s answer to ChatGPT, but with a slight twist, it’s social. That means users can share AI interactions to their feed, remix responses, and use it as a discovery tool.

Of course, this translates to user engagement and attention, which feeds into the AI, which feeds into the advertising business which feeds into ad revenue and Meta profits.

And let’s not forget those Meta glasses (you can see Zuck wearing them in the Theo Vonn interview earlier). They now whisper back translations in real time, and can even describe what you’re looking at. They’re turning the physical world into an AI-enhanced feed. Maybe a gimmick now…as I’ve said before, I think the smart glasses, as the tech and AI catches up to the idea, becomes an iPhone moment for Meta.

Still, it all loops back to one thing, ads. If Meta’s AI can drive better performance, with fewer humans (or no humans), it will unlock a margin expansion Wall St hasn’t priced in yet.

Zuckerberg’s massive push into AI isn’t new he’s been heavily investing in the infrastructure for years now. But now we’re starting to get a much clearer idea of how they plan to plug it all into the company’s core revenue engine.

And this little PR tour Zuckerberg is on, along with their latest earnings, is something the market is liking.

Meta just posted a 16% revenue jump in Q1 2025, driven largely by its AI-enhanced ad stack. They also smashed earnings per share (EPS) estimates quashing fears that all this AI expenditure would translate to slow or a reversal of growth.

Not the case.

Analysts are now bumping up price targets. And the stock pumped well over 5% in the day’s trading after the earnings release.

Nearly a billion people use Meta’s AI tools every month. And whether it’s through ads, AI assistants or augmented reality, the company is positioning itself as one of the most important connections between AI, businesses and consumers.

The old Meta sold ads. The new Meta sells “outcome” and it’s all powered by AI.

If Zuckerberg can pull it off, Meta may be one of the most important, and valuable companies to own over the coming years.

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A figure this big sounds unbelievable.

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Until recently, it was sealed off from the public.

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Capital at risk

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

• Vertiv Holdings (NYSE:VRT) up 10%
• Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) up 8%
• Meta (NASDAQ:META) up 7%

Bust 📉

• Xpeng (NYSE:XPEV) down 10%
• Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) down 8%
• Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) down 7%

From the hive mind 🧠

• It’s funny because in Europe I see something like this and I think, if Google will put AI in everything by default, I wonder if Europe will force them to make it opt-in. Nothing like European legislation to get in the way of progress.
• It does feel like Microsoft has had enough of Sam Altman and OpenAI. Maybe Satya isn’t vibing with Altman in the way that he might with Musk. And maybe it’s Grok that finds its way into the pockets of Amazon and Microsoft.
• Jensen Huang at The White House in a very public display and public comments. Speaking on China and Huawei, it’s an interesting watch (below).

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

Weirdest AI image of the day

Darth Vader running HR meetings

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision