Zuckerberg: Slow sales blamed on war, layoffs due to AI costs.

According to the Wall Street Journal, MetaPlatforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided new details on the company's aggressive AI plans at a company-wide meeting on Thursday, and addressed the negative market reaction to its first-quarter performance. Zuckerberg attributed the 8% drop in Meta's stock price to investors' concerns about higher than expected capital expenditure and the company's forecast of slower growth in the second quarter. Zuckerberg said that Meta's advertising business experienced "trajectory changes" after the U.S. initiated a war with Iran at the end of February. He said, "If oil prices rise, consumers will spend more money on oil and gasoline, reducing spending on non-essential goods, on which advertising is typically targeted." Zuckerberg attributed the company's upcoming layoffs to the need to invest more funds in data centers and other artificial intelligence infrastructure. He said, "The company basically has two cost centers. One is computing and infrastructure, and the other is personnel. If we invest more funds in one area to serve our community, it means we have less capital to allocate to another area. So this means we do need to moderately reduce the size of the company."