Meta made a prediction last year its generative AI products would rake in $2 billion to $3 billion in revenue in 2025, and between $460 billion and $1.4 trillion by 2035, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.
The documents, submitted by attorneys for book authors suing Meta for what they claim is unauthorized training of the company’s AI on their works, don’t indicate what exactly Meta considers to be a “generative AI product.” But it’s public knowledge that the tech giant makes money — and stands to make more money — from generative AI in a number of flavors.
Meta has revenue-sharing agreements with certain companies that host its open Llama collection of models. The company recently launched an API for customizing and evaluating Llama models. And Meta AI, the company’s AI assistant, may eventually show ads and offer a subscription option with additional features, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s Q1 earnings call Wednesday.
The court documents also reveal Meta is spending an enormous amount on its AI product groups.
In 2024, the company’s “GenAI” budget was over $900 million, and this year, it could exceed $1 billion, according to the documents. That’s not including the infrastructure needed to run and train AI models. Meta previously said it plans to spend $60 billion to $80 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, primarily on expansive new data centers.
Those budgets might have been higher had they included deals to license books from the authors suing Meta. For instance, Meta discussed in 2023 spending upwards of $200 million to acquire training data for Llama, around $100 million of which would have gone toward books alone, per the documents. But the company allegedly decided to pursue other options: pirating ebooks on a massive scale.
Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Kyle Wiggers
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Kyle Wiggers is TechCrunch’s AI Editor. His writing has appeared in VentureBeat and Digital Trends, as well as a range of gadget blogs including Android Police, Android Authority, Droid-Life, and XDA-Developers. He lives in Manhattan with his partner, a music therapist.
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