Mark Zuckerberg used Wednesday’s Q4 earnings call to outline the most significant shift in Meta’s product strategy since the company pivoted to mobile: building what he calls “personal superintelligence” for billions of people.
More than 3.5 billion people now use at least one of Meta’s apps every day. That includes over 2 billion daily active users each on Facebook and WhatsApp, with Instagram just shy of that mark. Zuckerberg’s plan is to fundamentally change how all of them experience those platforms through AI that understands their personal context—their history, interests, relationships, and goals.
“We are now seeing a major AI acceleration,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “I expect 2026 to be a year where this wave accelerates even further on several fronts. We’re starting to see agents really work. This will unlock the ability to build completely new products and transform how we work.”
The announcement marks a clear strategic direction after Meta spent 2025 rebuilding the foundations of its AI program. Now, the company is ready to start shipping.
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What personal superintelligence actually means
Zuckerberg’s vision centres on AI that doesn’t just respond to prompts but understands who you are.
“We’re starting to see the promise of AI that understands our personal context, including our history, our interests, our content, and our relationships,” he explained. “A lot of what makes agents valuable is the unique context that they can see, and we believe that Meta will be able to provide a uniquely personal experience.”
The practical application starts with Meta’s recommendation systems—the algorithms that decide what you see on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Zuckerberg described those systems as “primitive compared to what will be possible soon.”
“Today our systems help people stay in touch with friends, understand the world, and find interesting and entertaining content,” he said. “But soon, we’ll be able to understand people’s unique personal goals, and tailor feeds to show each person content that helps them improve their lives in the ways that they want.”
That shift means feeds will stop optimising purely for engagement and start optimising for personal goals. If you’re training for something, learning a skill, or trying to stay closer to family, the AI would understand that and surface content accordingly.
New models and products coming in months
Meta plans to start releasing new AI models “over the coming months,” according to Zuckerberg. He set expectations carefully: “I expect our first models will be good but, more importantly, will show the rapid trajectory that we’re on. And then I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the year as we continue to release new models.”
The company is merging large language models with the recommendation systems that already power its apps and advertising business. Zuckerberg said those systems are “already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business,” but the integration with LLMs will unlock capabilities that aren’t possible today.
One concrete application: agentic shopping tools. “Our ads today help businesses find just the right, very specific people who are interested in their products,” Zuckerberg explained. “New agentic shopping tools will allow people to find just the right, very specific set of products from the businesses in our catalogue.”
Those tools will work across both feeds and business messaging, with WhatsApp getting significant capability upgrades over time.
The content transformation
Zuckerberg framed AI as enabling entirely new forms of media, following the historical pattern from text to photos to video.
“People want to express themselves and experience the world in the most immersive and interactive ways possible,” he said. “We started with text, and then moved to photos when we got phones with cameras, and then moved to video when mobile networks got fast enough. Soon we’ll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI.”
The feeds themselves will become more interactive. “Today our apps feel like algorithms that recommend content,” Zuckerberg said. “Soon, you’ll open our apps, and you’ll have an AI that understands you, and also happens to be able to show you great content or even generate great personalised content for you.”
Damilare Odedina
Glasses are the ultimate form factor
The clearest manifestation of personal superintelligence, according to Zuckerberg, is glasses.
Sales of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses more than tripled last year. “We think that they’re some of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history,” Zuckerberg said, before making an explicit comparison to the smartphone transition.
“Glasses are the ultimate incarnation of this vision,” he explained. “They’re going to be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you and help you as you go about your day, and even show you information or generate custom UI right there in your vision.”
His analogy was direct: “I think we’re at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones. It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses aren’t AI glasses.”
Billions of people already wear glasses or contacts for vision correction. If Meta can make AI glasses as compelling as Zuckerberg suggests, the shift could be as fundamental as the move from flip phones to smartphones.
Reality Labs shifts priorities
Meta’s Reality Labs division—responsible for VR headsets and AR development—will see a strategic shift in 2026.
“We’re directing most of our investment towards glasses and wearables going forward, while focusing on making Horizon a massive success on mobile and making VR a profitable ecosystem over the coming years,” Zuckerberg said.
He acknowledged that losses will continue but framed 2026 as a turning point: “I expect Reality Labs losses this year to be similar to last year, and this will likely be the peak as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward while continuing to execute on our vision.”
The message is clear: Meta is doubling down on glasses while scaling back relative investment in VR hardware.
The infrastructure play: Meta Compute
To support the AI buildout, Meta launched Meta Compute as a dedicated initiative. Zuckerberg described it as a belief “that being the most efficient at how we engineer, invest, and partner to build our infrastructure will become a strategic advantage.”
The company brought in Dina Powell McCormick as President and Vice Chairman to lead partnerships with governments, sovereign wealth funds, and strategic capital partners. Her role includes “ensuring positive economic impact in the communities that we operate in around the world.”
Meta Compute will focus on long-term investments in silicon and energy. “We will continue working with key partners while advancing our own silicon program,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re architecting our systems so that we can be flexible in the systems we use, and we expect the cost per gigawatt to decrease significantly over time through optimising both our technology and supply chain.”
The goal is to secure the computing capacity needed to train models and deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people—while building supply chain flexibility that isn’t dependent on any single vendor.
How work is changing inside Meta
Zuckerberg also outlined how AI is transforming Meta’s internal operations, with 2026 positioned as the year those changes accelerate dramatically.
“I think 2026 is going to be the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work,” he said. “As we navigate this, our north star is building the best place for individuals to make a massive impact.”
Meta is investing in “AI-native tooling” that allows individuals to accomplish what previously required entire teams. “We’re starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person,” Zuckerberg explained.
The company is elevating individual contributors and flattening teams as AI tools enable smaller groups to operate more effectively. “I want to make sure as many of these very talented people as possible choose Meta as the place they can make the greatest impact—to deliver personalised products to billions of people around the world,” he said.
His closing on that point was optimistic: “If we do this, then I think we’ll get a lot more done, and it’s going to be a lot more fun.”
What it all adds up to
Zuckerberg framed 2026 as a defining year: “This is going to be a big year for delivering personal superintelligence, accelerating our business, building infrastructure for the future, and shaping how our company will work going forward.”
The strategy is ambitious and specific. Rather than competing directly on workplace productivity—where other AI companies have focused—Meta is building AI designed around personal life, leveraging the unique context it has on billions of users through their social graphs, content consumption, and daily interactions.
Whether people want AI that knows them that deeply, and whether Meta can execute on the technical challenges involved, will determine if this bet pays off. But with 3.5 billion daily users and platforms, people already spend hours on each day, Meta has distribution advantages few companies can match.
The question isn’t whether Meta can reach people. It’s whether those people will embrace the vision Zuckerberg outlined—or find it intrusive.
Emmanuel Umahi
