Meta Platforms revenue for Q1 was $42.3 billion, up 16 percent year-over-year and besting Wall Street estimates of $41.3 billion. Profits were up 35 percent to $16.6 billion, hurtling past analyst estimates of $13.6 billion. Advertising, up nearly 15 percent for the quarter compared to last year, comfortably passed $41 billion, driving the revenue performance. Meta began Q2 by launching its anticipated standalone Meta AI app. Built with natively multimodal Llama 4 models, the company is positioning the Meta AI app as “a personal AI designed around voice conversations,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Read more

Microsoft has “tapped on the brakes” of its spending on artificial intelligence, reducing capital expenses by more than $1 billion in the first three months of 2025. But after 10 straight quarters of increased AI outlay, momentum continues to propel the sector forward with new data center commitments in 16 countries and the expansion of the Phi small language family with the debut of Phi-4 (that supports text, visual and voice inputs). The moves come on the heels of $70 billion in sales for the first three months of 2025, when profits were up 18 percent to $25.8 billion. Read more

Online graphic design platform Freepik, has unveiled F Lite, a text-to-image generator that the company says was trained only on licensed content, making it safe for commercial use. The 10 billion-parameter F Lite — currently available in two openly-licensed versions — was developed in partnership with Fal.ai, a San Francisco-based AI startup that uses a proprietary inference engine and APIs to enable fast training, inference, and scaling of image, video, audio, and multimodal AI models. Freepik Head of AI Iván de Prado describes F Lite as “a significant milestone in open, responsible AI.” Read more

LG has revealed more information about its 2025 premium QNED evo lineup of LCD smart TVs in sizes ranging from 50 to 100 inches. QNED evo is the branding for LG’s 2025 LCD and LED TVs, which compete in the mid-range and high-end with models from Samsung, Hisense and TCL. The new QNED9M, the first LG QNED TV able to transmit audio and video wirelessly using LG’s True Wireless technology, allowing set-top boxes and gaming devices to be placed away from the TV for a clutter-free look and easier wall mounting. Last week LG announced it was adding direct access to Xbox gaming to its webOS portal. Read more

IBM plans to invest $150 billion over the next five years to fuel the U.S. economy. Included in the spending plan is more than $30 billion devoted to research and development for mainframe and quantum computers to be manufactured in the U.S. The announcement comes as President Trump is pressing global companies to invest more here, including with trade tariffs that threaten to make products manufactured overseas more expensive to sell at home. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says the company has “been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago.” Read more