When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2024, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games, and no gimmicks, The New York Times reported.

For years, that is what WhatsApp’s two billion users — many of them in Brazil, India, and other countries around the world — got. They chatted with friends and family unencumbered by advertising and other features found on social media. 

On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an era of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the devices default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it has no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.

“Thinking through the lens of privacy was incredibly important for how we though about bringing in these features to market,” said Nikila Srinivasan, a vice president of product management at WhatsApp. “Your personal message, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted.

CNBC reported: It WhatsApp, marking a major change for an app whose founders shunned advertising.

Meta announced Monday that businesses will now be ablate run so-called status ads on WhatsApp that prompt users to interact with the advertisers via the app’s messaging features. The ads will only be shown to users within WhatsApp’s “Updates” tab to separate the promotions from people’s personal conversations. Additionally, Meta will begin monitoring WhatsApp’s Channels feature through search ads and subscriptions.

The debut of ads on the messaging app represents a significant step in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plants make WhatsApp “the next chapter” in his company’s history, as he told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in 2022. The move to monetize WhatsApp also comes amid Meta’s high-profile antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission over the company’s blockbuster acquisitions of the messaging app and Instagram.

BBC reported: WhatsApp is launching three new ad features in a global roll-out across the messaging app.

The Meta-owned platform says that new ads will not be shown in the same place as people’s private chats, nor will the contents of their messages – which are encrypted – be used to decide which ads to display.

WhatsApp will instead use the country, city and language of the user, as well as how they interact with other ads and which channels they follow, to drive suggested content.

But people who have chosen to link their WhatsApp account to Facebook or Instagram will see more personalized ads.

Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang told employees in a memo on Thursday that he’s leaving for Meta, confirming reports from earlier in the week about his departure and a large investment from the social networking company, CNBC reported.

Meta is pumping $.14 billion into Scale AI as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power, a Scale AI spokesperson said.

“As you’ve probably gathered from recent news, opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in the memo that he shared on X. “In this instance, that cost is my departure. It has been the absolute greatest pleasure of my life to serve as your CEO.”

Scale AI is promoting Jason Droege, the chief strategy officer, to the CEO role. Droege was previously a venture partner at Benchmark and an Uber vice president.

The Verge reported: Meta is paying $14.3 billion to acquire 49 percent of Scale AI and hire its CEO Alexandr Wang to revamp its troubled AI efforts.

As part of the deal, Wang will report directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and remain on Scale’s board of directors, both companies announced on Thursday. Sources say Wang will lead a new AI lab at Meta tasked with building “superintelligence.” Meta spokesperson Ashley Zandy says the company “will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks.”

Zuckerberg has been actively recruiting a new team of researchers from rival forms to join Wang’s team, according to people familiar with the matter and other press reports. The Meta founder has reached out to potential recruits directly — usually via a cold email or WhatsApp message — and lured some of them away from companies like Google with seven-and eight-figure compensation packages.

This year, Scale signed a deal with the Department of Defense for a first-of-its-kind AI agent program for US military planning. Since then, it has expanded its business with other governments, recently inking a five-year deal to provide AI tools to Qatar. The company’s work with governments in Asia and Europe could result in a sizable portion of its overall sales.

TechCrunch reported: Data-labeling company Scale AI confirmed on Friday that it has received a “significant” investment from Meta that values the startup at $29 billion. The startup also said its co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang is stepping down from his role to join Meta and help the bigger company with its AI work.

Reports indicate that Meta invested about $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in the startup, which produces and labels data that’s used to train the large language models that underpin a significant portion of generative AI development.

Meta confirmed the investment. “Meta has finalized our strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI. As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexander Wang will join Meta to work on our super intelligence efforts. We will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks,” a spokesperson for Meta told TechCrunch.