Mark Zuckerberg says he knew he was taking an enormous risk when he greenlit Meta’s AI buildout—a commitment he pegged at as much as $200 billion—before there was any proof it would work. Zuckerberg’s push to own the full stack may stem from his nearly two-decade rivalry with Apple and Google, which control the world’s dominant smartphone platforms. Facebook’s iPhone app launched in July 2008, followed by an Android app in September 2009. Its mobile years that followed were marked by friction with the platform owners, some of it self-inflicted. Zuckerberg repeatedly sought workarounds to the limits those platforms imposed. In 2013, Facebook pushed updates to its Android app outside the Google Play store, prompting Google to ban the practice. In 2019, Apple shut down a Facebook “Research” app that paid users, including teens, up to $20 a month for sweeping access to their phone data. Zuckerberg has said that experience shapes his approach to AI. “One of my formative experiences has been building our services constrained by what Apple will let us build on their platforms,” he wrote in a 2024 post on Meta’s website. Speaking with Collison, Zuckerberg said owning the stack is “less about wanting to own a platform for its own sake. It’s about being able to build the best things.” Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/20/zuckerberg-apple-lesson-meta-100-billion-ai-bet/ submitted by /u/fortune
Originally posted by u/fortune on r/ArtificialInteligence