Meta relies on subscriptions to "recover"? Launches paid AI chatbot service, stock price rises over 3% intraday.
As the AI arms race continues to escalate with ever-increasing spending, Meta has finally begun to directly monetize "AI traffic."
On Wednesday the 27th, Eastern US time, Meta announced the official launch of its subscription system covering Meta AI, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, hoping to establish a new revenue stream beyond its advertising business. Following the announcement, Meta’s stock price briefly dipped more than 0.5% at midday but quickly turned upward and continued to climb, jumping about 3.4% at its intraday high.
According to reports, this is Meta’s first paid subscription service for consumers using its Meta AI chatbot. It marks an important step in demonstrating to investors that Meta's massive AI investments can eventually translate into real revenues.
Meta AI subscription starts at $7.99/month, rivaling OpenAI and Google
The Meta AI subscription has two tiers.
The basic version, "Meta One Plus," is priced at $7.99/month and is mainly targeted at users who frequently use AI to generate images, videos, and long-form reasoning.
The higher-tier "Meta One Premium" costs $19.99/month. Its functions are similar to the Plus version, but it offers higher AI usage limits. Meta did not disclose the specific limit standards, only stating that the Premium plan provides "significantly more" usage calls.
Currently, the service is first available in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia, and will gradually expand to more countries and regions. Meta emphasized that regular users can still use Meta AI’s image and video generation capabilities for free, but with increased frequency, they will encounter usage limits.
This model is quite close to competitors like OpenAI and Google. Media outlets point out that consumer AI subscriptions have become a key commercial path for major AI platforms, and Meta clearly does not want to be absent.
Under AI spending pressure, Meta urgently seeks a second growth curve beyond advertising
Behind the launch of the subscription business is Meta’s ongoing pressure from ballooning AI capital expenditures.
Mark Zuckerberg has consistently invested in AI infrastructure in recent years, promising to spend at least several hundred billion dollars on AI in the coming years. The company is currently building a large data center project in Louisiana, reportedly with an investment of over $200 billion.
In the earnings call in April this year, after Meta raised its capital expenditure outlook, investors began to show concern about its high-spending model.
Meta has repeatedly emphasized that its AI models have improved ad recommendations and precision targeting, creating value for its core advertising business. However, in the capital markets’ view, "advertising benefiting from AI" alone is unlikely to fully justify such enormous investments, so finding a more direct AI monetization model has become a necessary choice.
Not just AI—Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp all promote subscriptions
It’s worth noting that Meta is not only advancing paid AI offerings.
The company is integrating all its subscription products under the "Meta One" brand umbrella. Helen Ma, the executive in charge of subscriptions, stated that Meta is testing subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, planning to gradually promote them globally.
The subscription prices for these social products are about $2.99 to $3.99 per month, with slight pricing differences in various markets and bundled buying options available. Users who purchase Meta AI subscriptions will also receive additional benefits in related apps.
Additionally, Meta launched upgraded paid products for businesses and content creators:
- Meta One Essential: $14.99/month
- Meta One Advanced: $49.99/month
The higher-tier versions provide human customer support for Instagram and Facebook pages—a longstanding pain point for small and medium businesses. Meta also revealed plans to incorporate AI agent capabilities into these paid products in the future.
Subscription revenue is still "a small business," ads remain Meta's empire backbone
Although Meta’s subscription strategy is gaining momentum, subscriptions still account for a tiny portion of the company’s overall revenue structure.
Financial reports show that Meta’s "non-advertising income" in the first quarter of this year was $1.29 billion, which includes subscription fees and sales of hardware like AI glasses and VR headsets. In comparison, the company’s advertising income for the same period exceeded $55 billion.
However, for Meta, even if subscription revenues can’t threaten the advertising main business in the short term, their symbolic significance is clear: in an era of rising AI costs, capital markets want to see not only "smarter ad algorithms" but also AI business models that can truly be independently profitable.
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