Meta
“Can Meta's advertising and social platforms evolve into a broader commerce and AI-driven digital economy, and how much of in-platform payments, commerce, and creator monetization can Meta capture?”
Founded in 2004 as a college social network, Facebook scaled to become the world's dominant social media platform. Following acquisitions of Instagram (2012), WhatsApp (2014), and Oculus (2014), the company diversified into messaging and virtual reality. In 2021 it rebranded to Meta, betting heavily on the metaverse and AR/VR hardware. The failed Diem stablecoin project (2019-2022) marked an ambitious but ultimately abandoned attempt to enter embedded finance at internet scale; today Meta monetizes primarily through advertising, with embedded payments limited to in-app purchases on its platforms.