Mark Zuckerberg

Testified in first bellwether trial; Meta settled the second before opening arguments

The Los Angeles bellwether trial testing social media liability for addictive design features began jury selection January 27 and opened February 9. It's the first time major tech companies face a jury over claims their products harm children's mental health.

Updated Nov 3

Meta unveils Charm handheld AI device, VR Glasses, and camera-free audio glasses

Presented the new device lineup at Connect 2026

At Meta's Connect conference on September 23, Zuckerberg unveiled three devices meant to make its Muse AI assistant a daily habit: a keychain-sized handheld called Charm, a 100-gram VR headset, and a camera-free pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Updated Oct 31

Big tech's half-trillion-dollar AI bet

Q1 2026 earnings: ad business accelerating, AI tools driving 30% engineer productivity gains; raised 2026 capex to up to $145B; committed to building into capacity even in slower demand scenario

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—are planning up to $725 billion in combined AI infrastructure spending for 2026, up sharply from $410 billion in 2025, and all four reported first-quarter results on April 29, 2026. Microsoft delivered the clearest signal: $77.7 billion in revenue (up 18% year-over-year), Azure cloud growth of 40% (above its 37% guidance), and earnings per share of $4.13 versus analyst estimates of $3.67.

Updated Oct 29

Meta launches $35 billion stock offering to fund AI buildout

Controlling shareholder steering the company's AI infrastructure push

Meta priced the first phase of its equity raise on October 27: $25 billion of common stock at $625 a share and $12.5 billion of convertible preferred shares, for $37.5 billion. The company now plans up to $97.5 billion in equity, including a $60 billion at-the-market program tied to non-voting Class C shares expected to trade in the first quarter of 2027.

Updated Oct 27

Jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving users about data privacy

Statements he made found misleading by the jury; about 24.4 million violations tied to his statements

Judge Francis Mathew ordered Meta on Oct. 21 to pay New Mexico $25 billion, with 15% interest a year until it is paid. A jury found 43.9 million violations of the state's consumer protection law over statements about data privacy, hate speech and misinformation. Mathew wrote that Facebook told users they controlled their data, and that the claim was false.

Updated Oct 27

Meta's trump pivot

Managing the fallout from the 2025 moderation rollback as his top policy deputy departs

Meta ended its U.S. fact-checking program in January 2025 and replaced it with Community Notes, a crowdsourced system copied from X. Its own Oversight Board rebuked the change that April, saying it was announced hastily with no public evidence of human rights review.

Updated Oct 26

Meta settles teen social media addiction lawsuits with 47 US states

Avoided trial testimony via settlement

Teens on Facebook and Instagram face a two-hour daily cap, midnight-to-6-a.m. lockouts and no push notifications during school hours. The settlement that created those rules also bans "cosmetic procedure filters" for minors, and that ban is harder to write than to announce.

Updated Oct 25

Trump, six tech CEOs sign voluntary AI safety accord at White House

Signed the accord

Six leading AI developers signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence on September 29, pledging internal controls, an internal monitoring team, an external auditor, and board review. Anthropic is the first signatory to act, giving six staffers from METR, a nonprofit that evaluates frontier models, employee-like access to test its models and publish findings.

Updated Oct 17

MongoDB CEO resigns to lead Meta's enterprise AI push

Desai will report directly to him

Chirantan Desai quit as MongoDB's CEO on Sept 28, less than a year into the job, to run Meta's new enterprise AI platform. MongoDB shares fell about 20% that day, and former CEO Dev Ittycheria returned as interim chief.

Updated Oct 17

Meta abandons open-source AI playbook with first proprietary model from Superintelligence Labs

Betting heavily on proprietary AI after Llama 4 setback

For three years, Meta staked its AI strategy on open-source; the Llama series became the industry's most widely used open-weight model family. That ended April 8, 2026: Meta released Muse Spark from its new Superintelligence Labs and kept it closed, the first product of Alexandr Wang's rebuild.

Updated Oct 15

Meta abandons Manus acquisition after China blocks AI deal

As of October 2026: Overseeing Meta's AI strategy after the failed acquisition

Meta has abandoned its $2 billion purchase of Manus, a Chinese-founded AI startup, after Beijing ordered the deal unwound. Manus raised over $500 million in October, bought back Meta's stake, and now operates independently with Tencent as its lead backer.

Updated Oct 12

The race to build frontier AI

As of August 2026: Leading company's all-in AI transformation

Meta shipped Muse Spark, code-named Avocado, in April 2026—its first proprietary foundation model and a ground-up departure from the Llama architecture. The model ranked fourth on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index at launch, behind rivals at Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, but Meta's stock rose about 10% in the five days after release.

Updated Aug 1

Trump signs voluntary federal review of frontier AI models

As of June 2026: Lobbied Trump to weaken the order

Trump signed a voluntary framework on June 2 asking frontier labs to share their newest models with federal agencies for up to 30 days before release. Within ten days, the government had gone further. A June 12 export control directive forced Anthropic to kill worldwide access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, its two newest models, after the government said it had found a jailbreak in the more capable one.

Updated Jun 26

Meta starts selling its own-brand AI smart glasses at $299

As of June 2026: Pushing glasses as Meta's next computing platform

For five years, every camera-equipped pair of Meta glasses carried someone else's name: Ray-Ban, then Oakley. On June 23, 2026, that changed. Meta began selling eyewear under its own brand, the Meta Adventurer and Fury, starting at $299.

Updated Jun 23

Meta's Hyperion AI campus rises in rural Louisiana

Built World

As of May 2026: Leading Meta's AI infrastructure expansion

Meta's Hyperion data center, a $27 billion AI campus rising in rural Richland Parish, Louisiana, is on track to become the largest facility of its kind in history. Meta has quietly bought enough land to more than double it. The initial 2,250-acre, 4-million-square-foot build will deliver 2 to 5 gigawatts of computing power, enough to train the next generations of Llama. The financing is the biggest private-credit deal ever executed and the single largest private investment in Louisiana history. In February 2026, Fortune revealed Meta's quiet purchase of another 1,400 adjacent acres, setting up a Phase 2 that would roughly double the campus footprint.

Updated May 26

Meta kills Messenger’s native desktop apps, forcing a web-only future on Mac and Windows

As of May 2026: Leading Meta’s consolidation toward fewer, more controllable client surfaces

On December 15, 2025, Meta effectively bricked Messenger's standalone desktop apps: no more logins, no native client. Users got pushed to Messenger.com or Facebook.com.

Updated May 15

Big Tech reshapes workforces to fund AI buildout