Meta

[Geert Leysen]

Meta is gearing up to launch its Threads app, which competes with X/Twitter, in the European market in December, according to The Wall Street Journal. Expanding into the EU is expected to boost Threads’ global engagement, which has waned after its initial surge in July.

More:

• Threads debuted across most of the world in July but was delayed in the European Union due to its stricter online service regulations.
• To comply with EU rules, Meta may offer a view-only mode of the text-based app in the bloc, allowing users to see content without a profile, though they may need one to post on Threads.
• It’s unclear how Meta would create personalized recommendation algorithms for a view-only experience.

Zoom out:

• Threads gained 100 million users in its first week but now has around 73 million monthly global users, according to Sensor Tower.
• In contrast, X has an estimated 365 million monthly global users.
• Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Threads could be on track to hit 1 billion in the next few years, with the EU expansion as a potential boost.

[Geert Leysen]

A coalition of Spanish newspapers has sued Meta for €550M (~$600M), claiming the company has an unfair advantage in the online ad market. The AMI, representing more than 80 media outlets, claims Meta engages in “systematic and massive non-compliance” with the European Union’s data protection rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

More:

• The lawsuit claims Meta’s use of personal data from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users gives it an unfair edge in offering personalized ads.
• Meta’s ads largely rely on the personal data of its users without their explicit consent, the suit contends, violating GDPR requirements for websites to gain approval for data use.
• The lawsuit covers the period from May 2018, when the GDPR took effect, through the end of July 2022, though it could extend beyond that.
• Meta has yet to respond to the legal action.

Zoom out:

• In January, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta $414M. Meta was accused of violating GDPR rules when it asked Facebook and Instagram users to accept service terms that opened up their data to personalized ads.
• According to the DPC, the language in the terms did not sufficiently make it clear to users how their personal data would be processed.
• In May, Meta was fined €1.2B ($1.3B) by EU regulators for transferring user data and information to the U.S., the largest ever for a GDPR violation.

[Geert Leysen]

Meta releases ‘Code Llama 70B’ Outperforming GPT-4 on HumanEval

Meta has unveiled Code Llama 70B, a leap in open-source code generation models, surpassing GPT-4 with a HumanEval score of 67.8. Building on Llama 2’s architecture, Code Llama 70B, a large language model (LLM), specializes in code-related tasks, offering enhanced code generation and natural language understanding of code.

Code Llama 70B is trained on 1TB tokens of code and code-related data, setting a new standard in the field. It’s designed to generate code from text prompts, supporting popular programming languages like Python, C++, and Java, and is especially proficient in Python, owing to additional fine-tuning on 100B tokens of Python code.

This model offers three versions: a foundational code model, a Python-specific model, and an Instruct model fine-tuned for natural language instructions. The Instruct variant shows improved performance in generating contextually accurate and safe code outputs, making it particularly useful for code generation and debugging tasks.

Code Llama models handle up to 100,000 tokens of context, improving code generation for larger projects. They also exhibit versatility in serving different latency requirements, with the smaller 7B and 13B models offering faster, real-time code completion.

https://ai.meta.com/blog/code-llama-large-language-model-coding

[Geert Leysen]

Meta Platforms GAAP EPS of $5.33 beats by $0.39, revenue of $40.11B beats by $940M, initiates quarterly dividend

• Meta Platforms press release (NASDAQ:META): Q4 GAAP EPS of $5.33 beats by $0.39.
• Revenue of $40.11B (+24.7% Y/Y) beats by $940M.
• Revenue was $40.11 billion and $134.90 billion, an increase of 25% and 16% year-over-year for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant with the same periods of 2022, revenue would have been $816 million and $374 million lower, an increase of 22% and 15% on a constant currency basis for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively.
• Shares +7%.
• Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 3.19 billion on average for December 2023, an increase of 8% year-over-year.
• Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.98 billion as of December 31, 2023, an increase of 6% year-over-year.
• Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 2.11 billion on average for December 2023, an increase of 6% year-over-year.
• Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 3.07 billion as of December 31, 2023, an increase of 3% year-over-year.
• Ad impressions and price per ad – In the fourth quarter of 2023, ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 21% year-over-year and the average price per ad increased by 2% year-over-year. For the full year 2023, ad impressions increased by 28% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 9% year-over-year.
• expect first quarter 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $34.5-37 billion vs $33.87B consensus. Our guidance assumes foreign currency is neutral to year-over-year total revenue growth, based on current exchange rates.
• Meta’s board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of our outstanding common stock (including both Class A common stock and Class B common stock), payable on March 26, 2024 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 22, 2024.

[Geert Leysen]

Meta Platforms introduces its next-generation AI accelerator chip, internally dubbed “Artemis,” to reduce reliance on Nvidia’s chips and cut energy costs. The Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chip is optimized for ranking and recommendation models, offering a balanced mix of computing power, memory bandwidth, and capacity.

More:

• Meta’s larger custom silicon initiative includes investigating alternative hardware solutions, which include the MTIA chip.
• The American multinational technology conglomerate intends to make significant software development investments to utilize the capacity of its infrastructure effectively.
• The new chip, manufactured by TSMC using its “5nm” process, boasts three times the performance of its predecessor.
• The chip is currently operational in data centers, actively supporting AI applications, and ongoing enhancements are underway to broaden its capabilities, including accommodating generative AI tasks.

cnbc.com

Meta debuts new generation of AI chip

The new Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chip is part of a broad custom silicon effort at Mark Zuckerberg's company.