• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicts not wearing smart glasses will become a "cognitive disadvantage."
• Zuckerberg sees glasses as the "ideal form factor" for AI.
• Meta has been ramping up its glasses business by partnering with Ray-Ban and Oakley.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks smart glasses are the future.

During Meta's second-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg doubled down on the idea that smart glasses will soon become the main way people interact with AI and replace other devices as "primary computing devices."

"I continue to think that glasses are basically going to be the ideal form factor for AI," he told investors on Wednesday's call, adding that wearables with cameras, microphones, and displays will unlock new levels of utility.

"I think in the future, if you don't have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you'd probably be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg's bullish sentiments on AI wearables echo his letter earlier in the day, which predicted the rise of "personal superintelligence."

"Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful," wrote Zuckerberg in the letter published on Meta's blog.

Meta has been ramping up its wearables business with its Ray-Ban smart glasses and a recent partnership with Oakley. The devices let users stream music, take photos, record video, and ask Meta's chatbot about what they're seeing.

Sales have been "accelerating," according to the earnings report, and helped drive a revenue increase of nearly 5% for the Reality Labs division.

Meta has also been investing billions in acquiring AI talent, often from competing companies with jaw-dropping offers. Zuckerberg invested $15 billion in Scale AI to bring its CEO, Alexandr Wang, into the fold and lured at least four employees from OpenAI, one of whom is a co-creator of ChatGPT.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
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There's a fear in investing when a sector swells rapidly. Booming stock prices and aggressive spending feel great, until things inevitably cool off. Then comes the reckoning: Who overdid it in irreversible ways?

Big Tech is in an AI arms race, each company trying to outspend the others on data centers, GPUs, networking gear, and talent. Engineers can be let go. But the infrastructure? That's permanent. If the AGI dream fades, you're stuck with massive, costly assets.

So when Google announced it would hike capex by $10 billion to $85 billion in 2025 eyebrows went up. Most of it is for things you can't walk back: chips, data centers, and networking.

Google is "jumping aboard the AI crazy train," Bernstein Research analyst Mark Shmulik wrote, referencing a song by the late bat biter Ozzy Osbourne.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg brags about Manhattan-sized data centers. And Elon Musk keeps hoarding GPUs. While Sam Altman is building mega-data centers with partners. JPMorgan dubbed this "vibe spending," warning OpenAI might burn $46 billion in four years.

It's no shock when Elon, Zuck, and Sam flex on capex. But Google? That's surprising. "Google doesn't do this," Shmulik said. The company has been viewed as measured in recent years, prioritizing investment intensity with care. Not anymore.

Now investors want to know: Will these swelling bets pay off?

There are promising signs. Since May, Google's monthly token processing (the currency of generative AI) has doubled from 480 trillion to nearly a quadrillion. Search grew 12% in Q2, beating forecasts. Cloud sales surged 32%. CEO Sundar Pichai said Google is ramping up capex to support all this growth.

But it's still a huge gamble. "Does the current return on invested capital seen in both Search and Cloud hold up at higher [capex] intensity levels," Shmulik asked, "or is the spend a very expensive piece of gum trying to plug an AI-sized hole?" He leans optimistic.

Still, Google shares rose just 1% after these results. Not exactly a resounding endorsement.

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• Meta is in the midst of a massive AI hiring spree to build its Superintelligence Labs.
• It spent $15 billion to hire Scale founder Alexandr Wang and announced plans for a data center nearly the size of Manhattan.
• Mark Zuckerberg says two factors besides pay help attract top AI researchers when recruiting.

What's on an AI researcher's wish list when being courted by a Big Tech firm?

Sure, money plays a part. But Mark Zuckerberg says the AI talent he's talked to is also interested in two other things.

"Historically, when I was recruiting people to different parts of the company, people are like, 'Okay, what's my scope going to be?'" he said on an episode of The Information's TITV on Monday. "Here, people say, 'I want the fewest number of people reporting to me and the most GPUs.'"

AI GPUs, or graphical processing units, are the chips that researchers use to build, train, and run foundational AI models and the products they power. Nvidia, whose H100 GPU became a hot commodity as the AI race kicked off, is viewed as the leader in the space and has since launched more powerful chips.

"Having basically the most compute per researcher is definitely a strategic advantage, not just for doing the work but for attracting the best people," the Meta CEO said.

Others hiring in AI have attested to the same phenomenon.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas last year recalled trying to poach an AI researcher from Meta who shot him down, saying, "Come back to me when you have 10,000 H100 GPUs."

"You have to offer such amazing incentives and immediate availability of compute," Srinivas said. "And we're not talking of small compute clusters here."

Big Tech companies and artificial intelligence startups alike are clamoring for the best talent in AI right now, with some like Meta offering multimillion-dollar pay packages.

Meta has turbocharged its plans to build out its AI infrastructure. The company recently announced plans for new data centers, including one almost as big as Manhattan. Meta also shelled out $15 billion to buy a 49% stake in Scale AI, founded by Alexandr Wang, who joined as Meta's chief AI officer as part of the deal.

Zuckerberg has also been personally involved in recruiting top AI talent.

And if a limited managerial scope and access to vast computing power aren't enough to lure top talent, there's always money — and Meta has plenty to offer its AI recruits.

The company has poached talent from rivals like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman saying Meta is offering recruits $100 million signing bonuses.

• Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said he and Elon Musk are "very different," and that Musk can be "emotional."
• Durov also revealed what he sees as Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg's defining qualities and flaws.
• The Telegram leader also questioned whether ChatGPT will be able to stay ahead in the AI race.

Telegram cofounder and CEO Pavel Durov offered a quick personality assessment of some of his biggest tech rivals in a recent interview, calling Elon Musk "very emotional" and saying Sam Altman may not have the technical chops.

Durov, who was arrested last year after French authorities accused him of being complicit in letting criminal activity thrive on Telegram, pushed against the comparison some make between himself and Musk.

"We are very different. Elon runs several companies at once, while I only run one," he told the French outlet Le Point. "Elon can be very emotional, while I try to think deeply before acting." He added that Musk's perceived weaknesses, however, could also contribute to his strengths.

Both men have fathered many children — Musk has at least 11 known kids, and Durov told Le Point that he has more than 100 through sperm donation. All of them, Durov said, will get a sliver of his billions (he's worth nearly $14 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index).

When asked about Mark Zuckerberg's qualities and flaws, Durov said the Meta CEO "adapts well and quickly follows trends, but he seems to lack fundamental values that he would remain faithful to, regardless of changes in political climate or fashion in the tech sector."

Zuckerberg has made notable changes at Meta in recent months and since President Donald Trump came back into office, including ending diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and third-party fact-checking. Durov has recently criticized the Meta-owned rival WhatsApp, calling it a "cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram." A spokesperson for WhatsApp previously told BI that the app was "born with privacy in our DNA long before Telegram came along."

In terms of Altman's qualities and flaws, Durov praised his social skills, saying they've allowed him to make crucial alliances related to ChatGPT.

"But some wonder if his technical expertise is still sufficient, now that his co-founder Ilya and many other scientists have left OpenAI," Durov said, referring to the company's co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. He added that it will "be interesting" to track whether ChatGPT can stay ahead in the competitive world of AI chatbots.

Representatives for Musk, Zuckerberg, and Altman did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• Facebook is testing a downvote feature for comment sections. It's designed to cut down on spam.
• It would allow you to downvote comments that aren't "useful."
• Facebook has tested a dislike or downvote button before, but it never stuck. Will this be different?

Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to make Facebook great again, and Meta announced a tiny new feature that might be a step toward that goal.

As part of a series of features and policies aiming to cut down on spammy content, Facebook is testing a "downvote" button for comment sections. This would allow people to anonymously downvote comments that they deem less "useful."

This wouldn't be the first time something like this has come up. For nearly as long as the "like" button has existed (since 2009), the masses have yearned for a "dislike" button. Meta has toyed around with testing a feature like this, but ultimately has never done it.

Back in 2016, Facebook added the extra "reaction" emojis (smiling, laughing, hugging, loving). Geoff Teehan, a product design director at Facebook at the time, wrote a Medium post in 2016: "About a year ago, Mark [Zuckerberg] brought together a team of people to start thinking seriously about how to make the Like button more expressive."

Teehan explained why they went with additional reactions instead of just a "thumbs down" emoji:

We first needed to consider how many different reactions we should include. This might seem like a pretty straightforward task: Just slap a thumbs down next to the Like button and ship it. It's not nearly that simple though.

People need a much higher degree of sophistication and richness in what choices we provide for their communications. Binary 'like' and 'dislike' doesn't properly reflect how we react to the vast array of things we encounter in our real lives.

In 2017, Facebook also tested out a "thumbs down" reaction button for Messenger. This would've been similar to the Apple iMessage reactions that launched in the fall of 2016 and included a thumbs-down emoji.

Instagram has also considered something like this. In February of this year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted about a test of downvoting Instagram comments:

But will people understand what the downvote arrow actually means? Will they use it on comments that are extraneous and actually not "useful," or will they use it to try to crush comments they don't agree with or don't like?

I asked Meta about this, and a spokesperson told me that, unlike past tests of a dislike or thumbs-down button, this test will explicitly tell users that it's about being useful —a little text bubble below the button will say, "Let us know which comments aren't useful."

The test is still just a test. It might not actually end up being rolled out. Personally, I think that less-useful comments are less of a burning issue than some of the other AI-slop stuff on Facebook. (Facebook is working on combating some of that, too.) But hey, that's just my questionably useful comment.

• Many tech leaders tried to get close to Trump after the election, donating to his inaugural fund.
• One expert told BI that, since then, it's been a "rocky road" for Silicon Valley leaders and Trump.
• Here's where some of tech's big names — and businesses — stand with the president a few months in.

Some of the biggest tech leaders tried to get in President Donald Trump's good graces before he took office for a second time, meeting with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort and snagging prime spots at Trump's inauguration.

A few months into his presidency, many of those tech leaders are now dealing with tariffs and other disruptive policies, like immigration restrictions and funding cuts, that could impact their bottom lines.

At the time of writing, Trump had exempted many electronics from the harshest levies on China and instead said they would be moved to a different tariff "bucket" in the future. Yet other tariffs have caused US CEOs to pause spending and hiring, and they could make it more expensive to build AI data centers.

The stocks of all publicly listed companies included here have dropped since the inauguration, as has the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.

Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said some of the tech leaders have "probably been disappointed."

"The tech leaders had a buddy-buddy relationship with Trump early in the administration, but since then, it has been a rocky road," he said. Moving forward, he anticipates that tech leaders will still try to remain close to Trump, even if it doesn't guarantee returns.

"The fact that he meets with CEOs does not mean that he follows the advice they give him," he said.

Here's where some of the biggest tech leaders — and their companies — stand with the president now.

Representatives for Meta, Nvidia, and Amazon declined to comment to Business Insider. Representatives for the White House and other companies did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X, Boring Company, Neuralink

Elon Musk spent at least $277 million backing Trump and Republicans during the election, has influenced policy and personnel decisions, and is the face of the White House DOGE Office — for now.

The world's richest man has remained close to the president in the months since, but his involvement in Washington seems to be waning. Americans are souring on his political involvement, according to public opinion polls, and he has been viewed by some as a political liability. During a Tesla earnings call in April, Musk announced that he would be stepping back from DOGE and devoting more time to Tesla.

Tesla has suffered since Trump took office due to a widespread protest movement and plummeting sales. Musk has publicly criticized Trump's tariffs but said on the earnings call that Tesla is generally "the least affected car company" when it comes to levies. SpaceX could also benefit from new government contracts.

Other than Tesla, Musk's companies are privately held.

Mark Zuckerberg: Meta

Mark Zuckerberg and Trump have a tumultuous history, but the Facebook founder has recently tried to patch things up. The Meta CEO called Trump a "badass" before the election and ended fact-checking on Meta platforms. The company donated $1 million to the inaugural committee.

Court proceedings recently began in the Federal Trade Commission's blockbuster trial against Meta. The government is trying to force Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that the company operates as an illegal monopoly. Zuckerberg was the first witness and testified for hours.

Before the trial, Zuckerberg tried to have the suit dismissed. The FTC asked for $30 billion to settle, but Zuckerberg offered only about $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Meta could also take a hit from tariffs, since Chinese advertisers buy ads on its platforms. The company could lose $7 billion in ad revenue, the Journal reported.

Sundar Pichai: Alphabet

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election, and Google donated $1 million to the inauguration fund.

The company hasn't been spared from lawsuits — in April, the Department of Justice kicked off a remedy hearing for Google, where it will decide the company's fate after a previous ruling that it's a monopoly. One proposed solution is separating Chrome, Google's flagship search engine. Google has said it intends to appeal the case, and an executive said in a blog post that the DOJ's proposed solutions are "unnecessary and harmful."

Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported first-quarter earnings on April 24 and exceeded initial revenue expectations despite market volatility.

Jensen Huang: Nvidia

Unlike many of his counterparts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did not attend Trump's inauguration. He spent the day celebrating Lunar New Year with employees in Asia. He met with Trump shortly after, however, and Nvidia donated $1 million to the inaugural committee.

The chipmaker sources many of its semiconductors abroad, primarily in Taiwan, making the trade environment tricky. Yet in a March interview with CNBC, Huang sounded relatively calm about tariffs, saying that he's "enthusiastic" about building in the US and that "in the near term, the impact of tariffs won't be meaningful."

Morgan Stanley said in April that Nvidia was still its "top pick" in the market.

Tim Cook: Apple

Apple CEO Tim Cook personally donated $1 million to the inaugural committee and attended the event. He also had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election.

Apple is vulnerable to tariffs as the company manufactures many of its products in China. Analysts predicted that the original tariffs could massively drive up iPhone prices; It remains unclear exactly how prices will change in the fluctuating trade environment. The company is ramping up production in India.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent Cook a letter asking for more information about his reported efforts to get specific tariff exemptions. She wrote that they "raise fresh concerns" about corporations' abilities to "gain special favors."

Jeff Bezos: Amazon

In addition to his role as the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, Bezos also owns The Washington Post. During the most recent election, he sparked controversy by deciding that the WaPo wouldn't endorse a candidate.

After Trump won, Bezos had dinner with Trump and Musk at Mar-a-Lago. Amazon donated $1 million to the president's inaugural committee, and Bezos and his fiancée attended the inauguration.

Amazon is facing an ongoing antitrust lawsuit from the FTC and tariffs look set to affect it. Some Amazon sellers have had to raise prices, though a representative for the company previously told BI only a "tiny fraction of items in our store" have been impacted.

Shou Zi Chew: TikTok

TikTok is running up against the clock — Trump has repeatedly paused enforcement of a US ban to try and broker a deal with potential bidders for the company in America.

CEO Shou Zi Chew, the company's CEO, met with Trump in December and attended the inauguration. TikTok spent $50,000 on an inauguration party for Gen Z and influencers that helped spread the president's campaign message. The app's future remains uncertain.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a privately owned Chinese company.

Sam Altman: OpenAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman personally gave $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund and attended the event. He also visited the White House early in Trump's term to announce Stargate, a $500 billion private-sector AI infrastructure investment that spurred a public spat with Musk.

The company gave the White House recommendations for an "AI Action Plan" due to be submitted to Trump in July and advocated for a light regulatory environment.

OpenAI is a privately held company. At the end of March, it announced a new funding round that put its valuation at $300 billion.

Satya Nadella: Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella didn't attend Trump's inauguration but did congratulate him online, like many other tech leaders. Microsoft donated $1 million to the inaugural fund.