Meta AI Statistics 2026: Users, Capex, and Adoption Data

More than a billion monthly active users already use Meta AI, according to Meta’s Q3 2025 earnings call, and the assistant sits inside apps used by 3.60 billion people a day. That built-in reach is Meta’s main AI advantage, and it explains why the company now reports engagement growth rather than new user totals. These Meta AI statistics trace usage, spending, ads, models, glasses and Reality Labs through September 2026, using Meta’s filings, earnings calls and newsroom posts.

After the Muse Spark rebuild, Meta reported a 60% increase in the number of people interacting with the assistant each day. The bill keeps rising. Meta expects 2026 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to be in the range of $130 billion to $145 billion, per its second-quarter results, up from $72.22 billion for the full year 2025.

Key Takeaways

• Meta’s reported Meta AI audience grew from more than 700 million monthly actives on its Q4 2024 call to more than a billion monthly actives by its Q2 2025 call.
• At the low end of the 2026 capex range, Meta will spend about $36 per daily active person on infrastructure in one year, and about $40 at the top end.
• Quarterly capex reached $31.1 billion in Q2 2026, about 83% higher than a year earlier.
• Reality Labs’ Q2 2026 operating loss equaled about 10.7 times the segment’s revenue, even with AI glasses selling faster.
• Pairing GEM with new user-understanding models produced an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook in Q2 2026.
• Business AIs handled more than 10 million conversations each week in Q1 2026, up from 1 million at the start of the year.
• EssilorLuxottica sold over 7 million AI glasses last year, meaning 2025, up from the 2 million that the company sold in 2023 and 2024 combined.

Editor’s Choice

• Family daily active people: DAP was 3.60 billion on average for June 2026.
• Q2 2026 revenue: $60.8 billion, up 28% year-over-year.
• 2024 capital expenditures: $39.23 billion for the full year.
• Advantage+ run-rate: over $75 billion in annual revenue run-rate in Q2 2026.
• Threads monthly actives: Threads crossed 500 million monthly actives.
• AI ad creative adoption: over 9 million small businesses using at least one AI creative tool.
• Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3): prices starting at $449.

Meta AI Statistics: Monthly Active Users

• Meta reported large increases in Meta AI use since releasing the updates in Q1 2026, and the Meta AI app has consistently been near the top of the app stores.
• After passing more than 1 billion monthly actives, Meta said its focus is now deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI.
• Meta’s Q3 2025 call tied growth to model quality: Meta AI usage increases as Meta improves its underlying models.
• Meta has not disclosed a monthly total above a billion on any call since; its Q1 and Q2 2026 calls describe usage growth instead.

Source: Meta earnings call transcripts, Q4 2024 to Q3 2025

About This Data

• Compiled from 21 sources: 20 primary sources (Meta, Alphabet, OpenAI and EssilorLuxottica releases, filings and call transcripts) and 1 news report tracing to an EssilorLuxottica filing.
• Publication window: March 2025 to September 2026.
• Only company-issued or company-attributed data qualified; figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when Meta publishes new results.

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How many people use Meta AI?

More than 1 billion monthly actives already use Meta AI, which is the latest total Meta has disclosed on an earnings call. Meta has not published a higher monthly count since then. Its latest calls report daily engagement growth instead, so the current audience size is unconfirmed.

Meta Family Daily Active People

• June 2026 DAP rose 3% year-over-year, slower than the 7% year-over-year increase Meta reported for December 2025.
• December 2024 DAP was an increase of 5% year-over-year.
• Meta said the slight decline in DAP on a quarter-over-quarter basis was driven by internet disruptions in Iran, as well as a restriction on access to WhatsApp in Russia in March 2026.
• According to Meta’s Q2 2026 call, Instagram reached 2 billion daily actives, and Facebook has reached more than 2 billion daily actives for a while now.

Is Facebook losing users in 2026?

Meta’s own filings show no sustained drop. Facebook has reached more than 2 billion daily actives for a while now, and family DAP climbed back to 3.60 billion in June 2026 after a slight decline in DAP on a quarter-over-quarter basis in March, which Meta tied to disruptions in Iran and Russia.

Recent Developments

• September 23, 2026: Meta announced Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, open for pre-order starting at $349.
• September 2026: Meta One launched with more than 50 features on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Meta AI, with plans that start at just $2.99 a month for single products.
• September 8, 2026: Meta introduced Muse, a secure, private personal AI agent that proactively helps with people’s goals and suggests ideas.
• July 29, 2026: Meta said it made Meta Business Agents available globally this quarter on WhatsApp and Messenger, with more than 1 million businesses using them every week.
• July 28, 2026: EssilorLuxottica reported AI glasses almost doubling in revenue in Q2 2026.

Meta AI Engagement Statistics

• Since the Muse Spark rebuild, Meta reports a 60% increase in the number of people interacting with the assistant each day.
• WhatsApp is already the leading surface where people engage with Meta AI, according to Meta’s Q2 2026 call.
• Meta launched incognito mode this quarter on WhatsApp and the Meta AI app, allowing people to have private conversations with their assistant that even Meta can’t see.
• The core experience across our apps and Meta AI has always been free, Meta said when it launched paid Meta One plans.
• In early testing of Meta One, more than half of subscribers engaged with both AI and expression features in our bundled plans.

Source: Meta earnings call transcripts, Q4 2025 to Q2 2026

Meta AI Capital Expenditures

• Full-year 2025 capex of $72.22 billion was up about 84% from 2024.
• Q2 2026 capex was driven by investments in servers, data centers, and network infrastructure, according to Meta.
• Heavy spending squeezed cash: free cash flow was $784 million in Q2 2026.
• In Q4 2025, Meta doubled the number of GPUs we used to train our GEM model for ads ranking.
• Spread across 3.60 billion daily active people, the 2026 capex range equals about $36 to about $40 per daily user.

Why it matters: Meta guides 2026 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to be in the range of $130-145 billion against 3.60 billion daily active people. That is roughly $36 to $40 of infrastructure per daily user in one year, a cost Meta has to recover mostly through advertising.

Meta 2026 Capex Guidance

• Meta tied the first 2026 range to year-over-year growth driven by increased investment to support our Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts and core business.
• The April raise reflects our expectations for higher component pricing this year, per Meta’s Q1 2026 call.
• For 2025, Meta said capital expenditures growth in 2025 will be driven by increased investment to support both our generative AI efforts and core business.
• Meta now expects full-year 2026 total expenses to be in the range of $165-169 billion.
• In Q2 2026, Q2 total expenses were $42 billion, up 55% compared to last year.

Source: Meta earnings press releases and call transcripts, Q4 2024 to Q2 2026

Meta Revenue by Quarter

• Full-year 2025 revenue reached $200,966 million, up 22% from $164,501 million in 2024.
• Q2 2026 advertising revenue was $59,363 million, the bulk of the quarter’s sales and the base of the broader Facebook advertising statistics.
• Ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 14% year-over-year in Q2 2026, and average price per ad increased by 12% year-over-year.
• For the first time, quarterly Family of Apps other revenue reached $1 billion and grew 73% year-over-year, driven primarily by WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions revenue.

AI Advertising Performance at Meta

• Meta deployed the first generative model into our ads retrieval system and saw notable improvements in ad performance in Q2 2026.
• In Q4, we started testing our Meta AI business assistant with advertisers, and by Q1 2026 the Meta AI business assistant has now been fully rolled out to all eligible advertisers on supported Meta buying surfaces.
• A new runtime model across Instagram Feed, Stories, and Reels delivered a 3% increase in conversion rates in Q4 2025.
• In Q1 2026, Meta expanded coverage of our Adaptive Ranking model to support offsite conversions.

Advantage+ and Business AI Adoption

• One advertiser Meta cited on its Q2 2026 call saw a 13% incremental lift in purchases and a 16% increase in add-to-cart conversions after adopting Advantage+ sales campaigns.
• Meta’s value optimization suite run-rate was more than doubling year-over-year as of Q1 2026.
• Meta made Meta Business Agents available globally this quarter on WhatsApp and Messenger in Q2 2026, and is rolling business agents out on Instagram now too.
• Meta named two additional revenue streams: subscriptions and monetizing our competitive models through an API.

Source: Meta earnings call transcripts, Q3 2025 to Q2 2026

Key finding: Per Meta’s Q2 2026 earnings call, its AI-powered Advantage+ solutions reached over $75 billion in annual revenue run-rate that quarter. That run-rate alone exceeds half of the low end of Meta’s 2026 capex range, which is why the ads business, not paid AI products, carries the infrastructure bill for now.

Meta AI vs ChatGPT vs Gemini Users

• OpenAI says ChatGPT has over 50 million subscribers.
• Alphabet says the Gemini app has seen daily active users tripling in the last year.
• The broader ChatGPT vs Gemini usage data tracks the two standalone apps Meta AI competes with most directly.

Source: Meta, Alphabet and OpenAI disclosures, 2025 to 2026

Worth noting: The three totals use different yardsticks. Meta counts more than a billion monthly actives, Alphabet counts 950 million monthly active users for the Gemini app, and OpenAI counts more than 900 million weekly active users. A weekly count is a stricter bar, so the lists cannot be ranked directly.

Which is better, ChatGPT or Meta AI?

Usage data cannot settle which assistant is better; it shows where each one wins. ChatGPT is a standalone destination with over 50 million subscribers, while Meta AI rides inside Meta’s messaging and social apps, where WhatsApp is already the leading surface where people engage with Meta AI.

Muse Spark and Meta Superintelligence Labs Models

• Muse Spark is starting to bring the same intelligence to Meta AI across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Threads, according to Meta’s May 2026 update.
• Muse Spark 1.1 can actively manage its context window of 1 million tokens, and Meta is launching a public preview of the new Meta Model API where developers can access Muse Spark 1.1.
• Muse, Meta’s entry into personal AI agents, runs on Muse Secure VM, a dedicated virtual machine (VM) that houses both the agent and a person’s data.
• At Connect, Meta said it is bringing Muse to our AI glasses in the coming months.
• A new Muse release landed roughly every two to three months this year, a quick cadence even next to other recent model releases.

Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses Sales

• Meta said sales of its glasses more than tripled last year, referring to 2025.
• In Q1 2026, Meta reported the number of people using them daily tripling year-over-year.
• Meta Glasses, made with EssilorLuxottica, are the first glasses to ship with Muse Spark out of the box, and Meta said early sales have been strong, exceeding our expectations.
• By year-end, Meta plans more than 100 different glasses options across Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Meta Glasses.

Source: EssilorLuxottica results via CNBC, Meta earnings releases and Meta Newsroom, 2025 to 2026

Reality Labs Operating Losses

• Reality Labs Q2 2026 revenue was up 16% year-over-year due to strong growth in AI glasses revenue, partially offset by lower Quest headset sales.
• Meta said for Reality Labs, we’re directing most of our investment towards glasses and wearables going forward.
• For 2026, Meta guided to Reality Labs operating losses remaining similar to 2025 levels.
• Reality Labs lost $6,021 million in Q4 2025 alone.
• For full-year 2025, Reality Labs posted an operating loss of $19,193 million, compared with $17,729 million in 2024.
• In Q2 2026, the segment booked revenue of $431 million and an operating loss of $4,619 million, about 10.7 times its revenue.

The takeaway: Meta’s Q2 2026 release shows Reality Labs revenue of $431 million against an operating loss of $4,619 million, about 10.7 times its sales. Glasses demand is real, but at this scale it does not yet change the segment’s economics.

How much has Meta lost on AI?

Meta does not report a separate profit or loss for AI, so there is no official AI loss figure. The closest disclosures are capex and Reality Labs: capex totaled $72.22 billion in 2025, while Reality Labs lost $19,193 million that year. Neither figure isolates spending on AI models alone.

Meta Headcount and AI Restructuring

• Meta’s reported headcount includes approximately 8,000 employees impacted by the May 2026 headcount reduction.
• Q2 2026 costs included $1.18 billion of severance expenses in connection with the May 2026 headcount reduction.
• June 2026 headcount was a decrease of 1% year-over-year, after December 2025 headcount marked an increase of 6% year-over-year.
• The longer Meta employee headcount history shows how the AI-era hiring and cuts compare with earlier restructurings.

Is Meta Making Money Off AI?

Meta earns its AI returns mainly through advertising today. Its AI-powered Advantage+ solutions reached over $75 billion in annual revenue run-rate in Q2 2026, and the Family of Apps segment produced $23,394 million of operating income that quarter.

Direct AI revenue is still early. Meta has named two additional revenue streams: subscriptions and monetizing our competitive models through an API, and Meta One plans are now available globally. Meta has not disclosed subscriber counts or API revenue.

Conclusion

More than a billion monthly actives already use Meta AI, and Meta’s apps reach 3.60 billion daily active people, so distribution has never been the constraint. The open questions are cost and payback. Capex guidance has moved up twice this year, ad-ranking gains are funding the buildout, and Reality Labs still loses several times its revenue each quarter.

The next data points to watch are whether Meta resumes publishing Meta AI user totals, how many people pay for Meta One or Muse plans, and whether AI glasses revenue keeps compounding. For the company-wide view beyond AI, the Meta company statistics cover revenue, apps, and users in more depth.