On January 12, Brazil’s Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE) issued an injunction suspending Meta’s new WhatsApp Business Solution Terms that prohibit third-party AI chatbots from accessing its API. The move follows CADE’s determination that Meta could be engaging in exclusive, exclusionary practices by effectively reserving the messaging platform for its own Meta AI chatbot. CADE has formally launched a probe to assess whether the policy unduly favors Meta AI and restricts competition from providers such as OpenAI and Microsoft, with the agency setting a four-month deadline for a preliminary decision.

Citing an internal Bloomberg report, Meta informed employees this week that it will eliminate approximately 1,500 positions—roughly 10% of the 15,000-member Reality Labs division. The cuts are part of a broader strategy to reallocate capital toward artificial-intelligence wearables and data-center expansion, following cumulative losses exceeding $70 billion in the metaverse unit since 2020. Executives had previously considered up to 30% budget reductions for Reality Labs’ metaverse projects, underscoring mounting investor pressure over underperforming virtual-reality initiatives.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta Compute, an initiative to build out tens of gigawatts of dedicated AI-inference capacity by 2030, positioning infrastructure as a strategic moat. The program will be overseen by three senior executives: Santosh Janardhan, head of global infrastructure; Daniel Gross, leading long-term capacity strategy; and Dina Powell McCormick, tasked with government partnerships. Meta plans to invest in hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy over time, aiming to support rapid growth in generative-AI workloads and capture greater margin share as cloud-native competitors like Microsoft and Google accelerate their own capital outlays.