WhatsApp surpasses 3B monthly users

Meta's messaging app WhatsApp currently has over 3 billion monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company's first quarter results conference call on Wednesday.

After hitting the 2 billion monthly active user milestone in 2020, the app is now among the select few – aside from Facebook, also part of Meta – to surpass the 3 billion user milestone.

Because of its enormous user base, WhatsApp is a major business for Meta, particularly now that the company has placed a large stake on its AI approach.

The app, according to the corporation, is one of its largest distribution channels for AI services.

“We see people engage with Meta AI from several different entry points. WhatsApp continues to see the strongest Meta AI usage across our family of apps,” Meta's CFO, Susan Li, said during the conference call.

Zuckerberg stated that although WhatsApp makes AI capabilities easily accessible, Meta has had to adopt a different strategy to encourage the usage of its AI products in places like the US, where most users still prefer texting one another using the standard messaging apps on their phones.

“We hope to become the leader over time (in the US messaging market), but we're in a different position there than we are in most of the rest of the world on WhatsApp," he said.

"So I think that the Meta AI app as a stand-alone is going to be particularly important in the United States to establish leadership in – as the main personal AI that people use. But we're going to keep on advancing the experiences across the board in all of these different areas,” he added.

According to Meta, WhatsApp Business, the chat app's commercial platform, is expanding and contributed significantly to the $510 million in income generated by its app family.