5 Big Companies Owned by Meta

Since its creation, Meta has not hesitated to buy various companies. From WhatsApp and Instagram to small, unknown companies that are now fully integrated, the social media giant has spent big money buying out the competition. More than 100 purchases were made, which owner Mark Zuckerberg said were always about attracting talent and not the company itself.

In 2021, Meta changed its name from Facebook, marking a new era. The focus on booming technology sectors, like virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), has led to huge bill increases. It is expected that in May 2026, the company will lay off 8,000 employees. 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.

Alongside WhatsApp, it’s safe to say that Instagram is one of Meta’s biggest buys. The photo-centric social media app has amassed around 3 billion users and has become a must-have app for many. It now includes vertical video with Reels, intended to compete with TikTok, and Threads, launched during the tumultuous takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, now X.

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.

The leading messaging app on mixed devices in most of Europe, India and the UK, WhatsApp has more than 3 billion users, despite bans in countries like Russia and China. For many people around the world, it has become their primary messaging app, offering a completely free service that also features end-to-end encryption for added security.

WhatsApp was released in 2009, created by Brian Acton and Jan Koum. The app grew quickly, although the original launch version was not stable. 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, bringing customization options to the app, in addition to the hidden features that WhatsApp removed. There was originally a $1 subscription fee in 2013, before removing it in 2016.

Is this Meta’s biggest and most important fumble? Maybe, because Reality Labs is now at the center of billions of dollars spent on products that never really stuck. Originally Oculus VR, founded by Palmer Luckey, it launched the Oculus Rift in 2016. The headset was a revelation for the virtual reality market, with subsequent headsets improving the technology.

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, as well as shuttering several game studios it took over, 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.

An often forgotten fact is that Meta never actually created its own chat feature for Facebook. Beluga was a group messaging application for smartphones offering image sharing on iOS and Android devices. In 2011, Beluga was purchased by Meta for an undisclosed sum. None of the original Beluga team are with the company in 2026, they all left in 2018.

Facebook Messenger played a vital role in the creation of the Facebook social platform. Before Messenger existed, most private communication on Facebook was done through direct messaging, similar to the old forums. By rebuilding Beluga into Facebook Messenger, the company finally had its instant messaging application.

Messenger continues to be an important aspect of Facebook, with the app operating independently of the main Facebook app. Its user base lags behind Facebook in terms of 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.

Meta’s latest purchase, Moltbook, is a social media platform for AI agents. Specifically designed to collect feedback from agents as if they were posting on a forum, Meta scooped it up for an undisclosed amount. Much like most of Meta’s AI fare, there’s no clear indication of what the company intends to do with Moltbook, other than to open up “new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses.”

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 singularity spotting intrigues. However, media reports on the platform have revealed how easy it is to manipulate, with CNBC, The Verge and MIT Technology Review questioning the authenticity of it being driven entirely by AI agents. Wired also proved how easy it was to manipulate content on the platform.