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Meta Platforms (META) Developing Network Clocks for Metaverse

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Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) recently announced that it is deploying Precision Time Protocol (PTP) across its data centers to sync their computer networks to nanoseconds.

The deployment of PTP reflects Meta Platforms’ strategy to invest in technologies that will help develop a better experience across its family of apps, generating the majority of its revenues. In the third quarter, family of apps generated 99% of its total revenues.

The PTP will offer better timing accuracy, benefiting all of Meta’s technologies, from messaging on its social media platforms to playing games with people internationally. This will provide a better user experience and help retain users amidst stiff competition.

The deployment of PTP will also help synchronization of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) across its data centers. This will be crucial for growing META’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, upon which the company is heavily banking its revenue growth and building the metaverse.

Meta Growing AI Capabilities to Build Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg’s bold ambition to restructure Meta Platforms as a company primarily operating in the metaverse has faced various challenges. The company is facing its worst downfall in many years, negatively impacting its revenue growth from its advertisement business segment.

META’s top-line growth in the third quarter was affected by geopolitical tensions like the Russia-Ukraine war, which reduced its monthly active users across its family of apps, namely Facebook and Instagram.

Rising inflation also hurt the ad spending budgets of enterprises, which weighed on the ad revenues of the company in the last reported quarter.

Meta Platforms’ ad revenue business is also facing declining growth due to ad targeting-related headwinds created by Apple’s (AAPL - Free Report) iOS changes.

Apple’s iOS changes have made ad targeting difficult, which has increased the cost of driving outcomes. Meta Platforms’ advertisement revenues decreased 3.7% year over year to $27.24 billion in the third quarter, and it expects these factors to hurt advertising growth in the fourth quarter of 2022.

These reasons have impacted the stock negatively as it pummeled 67.4% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks Computer and Technology Sector’s fall of 32.2% in the same period.

However, to turn back the tide and regrow its advertising revenues, Meta Platforms, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), is investing heavily in AI and Machine Learning (ML) to support the ads infrastructure. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

One of the most important factors contributing to Meta Platforms’ AI technology growth is its partnerships with PyTorch foundation co-founders NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) to develop and architect the required networking system and AI models for the metaverse.

AMD has collaborated with META as an ecosystem partner to build a Metaverse-ready radio access unit (RAN). AMD’s radio chip Xilinx Zynq UltraScale RFSoC will be utilized to develop multiple Evenstar radio units (RU) to expand 4G/5G mobile network infrastructure, which is crucial for the metaverse.

Meta Platforms has collaborated with NVIDIA to build an AI research supercomputer, helping META AI researchers to build different AI models crucial for creating the metaverse.

AI and ML are crucial for the company as these will help it drive operation growth. As such, the company is making strategic investments in new technologies and building partnerships to develop the metaverse.

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