Girl math: I sold Meta at its peak $384 price per share in 2021, but bought back at the start of this year at $124. And since it’s trading at $304, I’m up 145%.

Boy math: It’s not a loss until you sell.

On Wednesday, Meta held its annual Connect conference — unveiling a range of new software and hardware products — reflecting its ambitions to reduce its reliance on ads. At the core of each of these products are two letters: A and I.

Let’s rewind. Meta sat out on the digital assistants’ arms race: Apple (Siri), Microsoft (Cortana), Amazon (Alexa) and Google (Assistant). But Meta isn’t about to miss the next one.

AI chatbots. Everybody’s got ‘em nowadays, including Meta’s creatively named Meta AI — which is unlike Bard and ChatGPT. It’s got personality…

• The chatbots have the likeness of 28 celebrities, including D&D dungeon master Snoop Dogg, “big brother” MrBeast and ride-or-die Kendall Jenner.
• New generative AI tools (i.e., stickers, image creation/editing) and AI personalities will be found across Instagram, Facebook and VR products.

Why so chatbot obsessed? Discussing what to eat on Messenger? Just @MetaAI and it’ll give suggestions. While Meta hopes AI will increase engagement across its apps, Google and Snap are already testing ads inside chatbots (no surprise for Google Maps users) — and it’s likely a matter of time before ads show up inside Meta’s AI products, too.

Tim Cook and Apple — Zuck didn’t forget about you, either

Apple turned up the heat with its Vision Pro launch this year. But with Meta having lost over $21B on its Meta Reality Labs unit so far, Zuck isn’t going down without a fight — unveiling two new AI-powered VR/AR products:

• Quest 3, which offers Xbox Cloud Gaming support and other new features, is priced 7x cheaper than Apple’s — making it one of the most accessible headsets on the market.
• Ray-Ban Smart Glasses (powered by Meta’s AI) comes with audio and camera recording and is awfully similar to Snap’s Spectacles and Google Glass — two failed smart glasses.

What did we learn this year? Given enough time, every company will hop aboard the next big thing. And this time, it seems like every company will become an AI company.