\n<\/p>\n
WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion people using it every month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted during the company\u2019s Q1 results conference call on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, WhatsApp remains free to use and doesn\u2019t serve any ads. The app reached the 2 billion monthly active user mark back in 2020<\/a>, but with the latest milestone, it\u2019s now one of the few apps to cross the 3 billion user mark, besides Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n That humongous user base makes WhatsApp a key business for Meta, especially now as the company has bet the farm on its AI strategy. The company has previously said that the app is one of its biggest distribution platforms<\/a> for AI services.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see people engage with Meta AI from several different entry points. WhatsApp continues to see the strongest Meta AI usage across our family of apps,\u201d Meta\u2019s CFO, Susan Li, said during the conference call. She also noted that most WhatsApp users engage with Meta AI in one-on-one chats.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg said that while WhatsApp provides easy access to AI features, Meta has had to take a different approach to spur adoption of its AI products in markets like the U.S., where the majority of people still prefer to use their phones\u2019 stock messaging apps to text each other. That\u2019s where the company\u2019s newly released Meta AI app<\/a> comes in. <\/p>\n \u201cWe hope to become the leader over time [in the U.S. messaging market], but we\u2019re in a different position there than we are in most of the rest of the world on WhatsApp. So I think that the Meta AI app as a standalone is going to be particularly important in the United States to establish leadership in \u2014 as the main personal AI that people use. But we\u2019re going to keep on advancing the experiences across the board in all of these different areas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The company said the chat app\u2019s business platform, WhatsApp Business, is growing, and accounted for a large portion of the $510 million in revenue brought in by its family of apps. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBerkeley, CA<\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJune 5<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tBOOK NOW<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n