Meta's 2025 Strategy: Zuckerberg Prepares for 'Intense' AI-Focused Year

Mark Zuckerberg tells Meta employees that it's 'going to be a crazy year'

What DeepSeek's AI breakthrough means for Meta, OpenAI, and Nvidia The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg spoke to over 70,000 employees during an hour-long meeting, outlining Meta's strategic priorities for 2025 -- including artificial intelligence, data center investments, and the metaverse. The meeting took place just a day after Meta reported strong fourth-quarter earnings, with revenue climbing 21% year over year to $48.4 billion. Zuckerberg also spent time defending some of the company's recent changes, including scaling back restrictions on online speech, ending diversity initiatives, rolling back Meta's fact-checking program, and aligning more closely with President Donald Trump's administration. "I want to be clear, after the last several years, we now have an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government," Zuckerberg said. He added that Meta wouldn't be the only company to make such changes to more closely align with the new presidential administration. "We're in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful," Zuckerburg said. "Because of that, we and every other institution out there are going to need to adjust." The meeting also comes just weeks after news broke that the company plans to layoff about 3,600 low-performing workers next month. In a memo to staff posted on Meta's internal forum, Workplace, Zuckerberg said he's decided to "raise the bar" on performance management. The memo also mentioned that this would be an "intense year" for the company. "Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies in the world -- AI, glasses as the next computing platform, and the future of social media," Zuckerberg said in the memo. "This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams." However, some employees pressed Zuckerberg during Thursday's meeting on Meta's rising investments in data centers, given the emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that developed an advanced AI model at a fraction of competitors' costs. Zuckerberg responded that DeepSeek's technological advancements have already helped improve Meta's AI models and support the company's open-source AI strategy. He also said that spending on data centers will prove to be a competitive advantage for the company.

"Buckle up": Meta's Mark Zuckerberg warns of "intense" year filled with AI

Mark Zuckerberg is prepping Meta for a big year in AI (Image credit: Getty Images) We're only a month into 2025, and it's shaping up to be an interesting year, to say the least. There's a heavy focus on AI right now, especially with the U.S. government's $500 billion investment in AI and the recent rise of DeepSeek, the best ChatGPT alternative we've seen in a while. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows this, and is trying his best to capitalize on the demand for solid, reliable AI models. In a leaked all-hands meeting reviewed by Business Insider, Zuckerberg warns employees to "buckle up" for an "intense" year with a massive focus on AI. In a contradictory statement, Zuckerberg can be heard saying, "This is a marathon, not a sprint. But honestly, this year feels a little more like a sprint to me." Zuckerberg is in a race against multiple other companies -- Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and many more -- to create a "highly intelligent and personalized" digital assistant," which is what he believes is the key to success in 2025. In the leaked recording, Zuckerberg can be heard predicting that 2025 will be the first year a "highly intelligent and personalized" digital assistant reaches 1 billion total users. And he thinks that "whoever gets there first is going to have a long-term, durable advantage towards building one of the most important products in history." That sounds like a bold claim, but it's honestly not that far-fetched. When DeepSeek recently launched and demonstrated true competition for ChatGPT, stocks were affected almost instantly. We'll likely see the same stock market flux when one company prevails over the others with the "best" AI digital assistant. Zuckerberg also thinks 2025 will be the year Meta starts seeing AI agents writing software and playing a bigger role in the company. When asked if this would lead to job cuts, he said it was "hard to know" and that it could end up leading to more engineering roles to harness AI, despite some roles becoming redundant in the process. In non-AI news, Zuckerberg said Meta would be moving away from a third-party fact-checkers system to an X-style community notes system, rolling back DEI programs, and "resetting" relationships with governments worldwide. How Meta plans to tackle this goal of being the first company with a personalized, super smart digital assistant, we don't know. But as with most technologies, winning in that race will require some deep pockets.

Every Time Mark Zuckerberg's All-Hands Meetings Preceded Meta Layoffs

Meta announced it would cut 5% of its global workforce in February. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has again started the year with a nerve-wracking all-hands meeting, telling his employees to "buckle up" for an "intense year." The move comes after Meta announced it would lay off 5% of its global workforce in February, focusing on its poorest-performing employees. However, over the past few years, Zuckerberg's all-hands have usually preceded announcements of layoffs -- leading to concerns that more cuts could occur throughout the year. Meta's 2025 All-Hands Meeting In Zuckerberg's all-hands meeting, reviewed by Business Insider , the CEO told employees AI would be at the forefront of everything Meta did this year. Employees were told that this year would be about urgency. "This is a marathon, not a sprint," Zuckerberg said. "But honestly, this year feels a little more like a sprint to me." The CEO also predicted this would be the first year Meta would see AI agents working in the company. Zuckerberg said it was "hard to know" if this would lead to job cuts in the company but claimed it might lead to more hiring of AI-based engineers to harness the technology effectively. "The nature of what engineering is in the future will be different than it is today," the CEO said. Over the past few years, Zuckerberg's all-hands meetings have preceded sweeping job cuts in the company. This year, Meta already announced that it would be cutting around 5% of its global workforce. However, the focus on AI and talk of AI agents will likely raise concerns about more layoffs throughout the year. Here are the other times Zuckerberg's all-hands meetings preceded mass layoffs in the world's leading tech company. 2022: A Shift to Metaverse In early 2022, in Meta's all-hands meeting, Zuckerberg claimed Meta was now "a metaverse company, building the future of social connection." This was at the peak of Meta's push for the metaverse, before the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, during the brief period when building virtual worlds was more exciting than AI. The all-hands meeting was held shortly after Meta's name change from Facebook, and investors were spooked by the company's hard shift away from social media. Employees were also nervous about the switch, with company engineers reportedly being urged to apply for internal openings in Meta's virtual reality unit. The employees may have been right to be worried, as Meta went on to make its first major workforce reduction in November, laying off 11,000 employees. "Today I'm sharing some of the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history," Zuckerberg said in a news release. "I've decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go," he added. 2023: The Year of Efficiency In February 2023, Zuckerberg said Meta's management theme for the following 12 months would be the "Year of Efficiency" to become a "stronger and more nimble organization." The comments came after Meta's share price fell 64% in 2022, and sales declined 4% in the fourth quarter, marking its third consecutive decline. In an earnings call, Zuckerberg said: "The first 18 years I think we grew it 20%, 30% compound or a lot more every year. "And then obviously that changed very dramatically in 2022, where our revenue was negative for growth, for the first time in the company's history," he added. Zuckerberg said Meta would work on being more "proactive on cutting projects that aren't performing or may no longer be crucial" and that it would emphasize "removing layers of middle management to make decisions faster." Again, this preceded more layoffs -- this time, with an additional 10,000 employees cut in April 2023. At the time, Zuckerberg cited climbing U.S. interest rates and increased regulation for the cuts. An AI Future for Meta? As AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous throughout almost every industry, Meta will likely continue to hone its focus on the world's hottest technology. How this will continue to impact Meta's workforce remains unclear, but Zuckerberg's comments on the upcoming adoption of AI employees make it clear that some more change is afoot. Zuckerberg said last week that the tech giant plans to invest up to $65 billion to expand its AI infrastructure this year, in a bid to compete with Google and OpenAI. "This will be a defining year for AI," Zuckerberg said in the Facebook post. "This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business." In terms of workforce, Zuckerberg said the company would ramp up hiring for AI roles.