In 2021, Meta changed its name from Facebook, marking a new era. The focus on booming technology sectors, such as virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), has led to significant increases in bills. The company is expected to lay off 8,000 employees in May 2026. This also involves an increase in the spending budget, up to $145 billion. In 2025, it spent $72.2 billion as the rat race for AI continued.
In 2026, the organization had approximately 80,000 employees across all the companies and divisions it owns. Meta is now much more than just the social media startup it started out as.
Meta bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion. At the time, it was Meta’s biggest purchase since buying Snaptu, an application host for Internet-enabled phones, for $70 million in 2011. Instagram has become a social media staple and can be integrated directly into Facebook if the user chooses.
Instagram has also been a hotbed of reactionary features. Much like Reels and Threads, which were created to lure users away from alternative platforms, Instagram also offers Snapchat-like stories and filters. Surprisingly, it is most popular in India, with 414 million users in 2025, with the United States coming in second with 172 million users.
WhatsApp was launched in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum. The app grew quickly, although the initial launch version was unstable. In 2013, a year before Meta bought the company, it had around 400 million monthly users. Then, in 2014, Meta bought the company for a whopping $19 billion. This made many people very rich, with one venture capital firm receiving a return on investment of around 5,000%.
The application remains incredibly powerful, even if the rest of Meta is in relatively poor health. In May 2026, the company rolled out its second subscription service, WhatsApp Plus, which brought customization options to the app and restored hidden features that WhatsApp had removed. There was originally a $1 subscription fee in 2013, before it was removed in 2016.
Oculus VR (now Reality Labs)
Oculus was purchased for $2 billion in 2014, and Meta went all-in on VR in 2021. With the successes of the Oculus Quest in 2019, the company became a “metaverse” company. Oculus was renamed Reality Labs in 2021 alongside Facebook’s transition to Meta. The division has since lost billions, with an overall loss of $80 billion reported since 2020.
Meta has since laid off 10% of the unit’s staff and shuttered several game studios it acquired, including Ready at Dawn and Twisted Pixel Games. Zuckerberg, apparently tired of the vertical he has oriented his entire company towards, is now focusing on AI.
Beluga (now Facebook Messenger)
Facebook Messenger played a vital role in Facebook’s creation. Before Messenger existed, most private communication on Facebook was via direct messages, similar to those on old forums. By rebuilding Beluga into Facebook Messenger, the company finally had its instant messaging application.
Messenger remains an important part of Facebook, operating independently of the main Facebook app. Its user base lags behind Facebook’s in monthly active users, but it still hosts around a billion users in 2026. However, despite Meta’s reputation for data collection, it still allows end-to-end encryption of Messenger messages.
Shedding book
Moltbook initially went viral with the advent of OpenClaw, an all-in-one AI assistant. This can create an “agent,” which is a way to “focus” an AI model on specific tasks. For example, OpenClaw can be asked to interact with WhatsApp or take full control of the PC it is stored on. OpenClaw can be invited, alongside non-OpenClaw agents, to publish to Moltbook as if it were real.
Moltbook currently claims to have over 200,000 human-verified agents on the platform, and nearly 3 million in total. The platform has been a hive of activity, with some intriguing singularity spotting. However, media reports on the platform have revealed how easy it is to manipulate, with CNBC, The Verge, and MIT Technology Review questioning whether it is being driven entirely by AI agents. Wired also proved how easy it was to manipulate content on the platform.
