Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has expressed his company's unwavering commitment to its artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, despite the recent emergence of DeepSeek, a startup that has sent shockwaves through the AI community with its innovative models. During Meta's fourth-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg fielded multiple questions from Wall Street analysts about the implications of DeepSeek's breakthroughs on Meta's AI plans.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that DeepSeek's accomplishments have "only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing to be focused on." He noted that Meta is still digesting the novel approaches taken by DeepSeek and plans to incorporate its advancements into Llama, Meta's AI assistant. The CEO emphasized that investing heavily in capital expenditures (CapEx) and infrastructure will provide a strategic advantage in the long run, dispelling concerns that Meta's significant spending on graphics processing units (GPUs) might be rendered obsolete by DeepSeek's innovations.

Zuckerberg's argument aligns with the growing consensus that computing resources will shift from the training phase of AI development towards enhancing models' ability to "reason." He explained that this shift doesn't necessarily mean less computing power is required, as more compute can be applied at inference time to generate higher levels of intelligence and quality of service. Meta is gearing up to release Llama 4 with multimodal and "agentic" capabilities in the coming months, with expectations of reaching one billion users this year.

In a thinly veiled jab at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other unprofitable startups, Zuckerberg highlighted Meta's "strong business model" to support its roughly $60 billion AI investment this year, contrasting it with "others who don't necessarily have business models to support it on a sustainable basis." Meanwhile, Meta reported a staggering $20.8 billion net profit for the fourth quarter of 2024, a 43% increase from the previous year, with revenue reaching $48.39 billion, a 22% increase.

In other news, Meta is paying President Donald Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company for banning his account after the January 6th insurrection. The majority of the payment will go towards funding Trump's presidential library.

The earnings call also revealed that Meta hasn't seen any noticeable impact from its content policy changes on ad spending, with 3.35 billion people using at least one of Meta's apps daily in the fourth quarter, a 5% increase from the year-ago period.

As the AI landscape continues to evolve, Meta's unwavering commitment to its strategy serves as a testament to the company's confidence in its ability to stay ahead of the curve. With DeepSeek's emergence, the AI community is likely to experience significant shifts in the coming months, and Meta's response will be closely watched by industry observers.

In the broader context, the AI arms race is heating up, with companies like Microsoft making DeepSeek's R1 model available on Azure AI and GitHub. OpenAI has also claimed that its models helped train China's DeepSeek, adding another layer of complexity to the AI ecosystem. As the stakes continue to rise, one thing is clear: the AI revolution is only just beginning, and companies like Meta will need to adapt quickly to stay relevant.