'A brief history of Meta spending a lot of money on R&D'

 In its most recent earnings release, Meta Platforms (META) revealed that it spent $17.1B in Q4 on research and development, largely on AI-related projects. This was up nearly 41% from last year. 

The heavy R&D investment also represented a continued escalation compared to previous quarters. In Q3, the Facebook parent spent $15.1B, following a total of $12.9B in Q2. 

 

Bar chart showing Meta's quarterly R&D expenses (Seeking Alpha)

   

The ramped-up spending on AI marks the second time this decade that Meta has excitedly pursued an emerging tech trend. In October of 2021, Facebook officially changed its name to Meta Platforms, signaling its all-in commitment to the idea of the metaverse.

AI has largely replaced that focus on the metaverse, with the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm also dramatically raising the stakes along the way. While META committed $17.1B to R&D in the most recent quarter, this category only saw a little more than $7B in spending in Q4 of 2021, a time when it was loudly making its pivot towards the metaverse.

Meanwhile, Meta has recently moved decisively away from the metaverse. Last month, the company announced major cuts in its Reality Labs unit, which is the primary hub for its metaverse operations. This followed the June 2025 announcement that it was creating what it called its Superintelligence Labs, a unit designed to consolidate AI research and related product groups.

 

A timeline of Meta's R&D spending, with key events marked (Seeking Alpha)

 

But just how much is Meta now spending on R&D? 

As the company was disclosing its $17.1B in quarterly R&D spending, Meta also revealed Q4 revenue of $59.9B and net income of $22.8B. In other words, over a quarter of the firm's revenue (28.5% to be exact) was redirected to research.

In Q4 2021, when the name change took place and the metaverse represented the key development focus, the company spent $7.05B on R&D compared to revenue of about $33.67B. So a 77% increase in revenue over that three-year period gave the company significantly more resources to invest. 

At the same time, Meta has also committed a larger share of its expanded revenue to AI. The R&D expense in the last quarter of 2021 represented 20.9% of revenue, compared to the 28.5% seen in the most recent quarter.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/a-brief-history-of-meta-spending-a-lot-of-money-on-r-d/ar-AA1Vr1xF