Meta's Dina Powell McCormick: The Case for Data Centers, Backlash, AI Job Boom & Meta’s Future

A trailblazing leader in government, business, and philanthropy. A former presidential adviser to Donald Trump, Dina Powell McCormick joined Meta Platforms as president and vice chairwoman. She'll help lead the company's massive AI expansion, including data centers, investments, and global partnerships. Powell McCormick's background is exactly where Meta's new bottlenecks are. There is a transformation in humanity coming. Nothing can stop that now with this technology. 3.5 billion people every day are on Meta. I think we all know that the next three years could be the whole game. Women are the secret sauce. How about that? Please welcome Dina Powell McCormick. Thanks for coming out. Hey, good to see you. All right, good to see you. How are you? Dina, thank you for being here. We were just finishing up a conversation with Satya about how we tell the story about the benefits of data centers, what they're doing to communities, and why they're actually net economically positive. I know you, so I'm going to get right into it because I know you actually have a video on this. Do you want to just start with your video? Would that be okay?

That'd be great. I just want to say I'm so psyched to be at the All-In Summit, first time to speak, and as long as this episode and panel get way more listeners and views than Senator McCormick did when he came on, I'll be very, very happy with that. Now we can roll the tape. No competition.

1. Impact of Meta's data center in Richland Parish, LA: $50K teacher checks, revitalizing a small town community

Good. We'll put it on Polymarket. Let's watch the video.

Richland Parish was the place that opportunity forgot about. I've grown up here my whole life, and I've seen a lot of people move away looking for work, including my son. What you were hearing a lot lately was, “There's nothing here for us anymore.” We knew that having a data center would give us an industry here that we haven't had before. That's a huge investment in our community.

We started this business simply because Meta was coming. We thought we had hit it big when we got to cater for 40 people. Now we do 400 a week.

Since Meta came to town, we've hired more employees.

A multibillion-dollar capital investment like the one that Meta is making in Richland Parish is transformative. It's extremely exciting to attract and retain quality teachers. So when I first got the news about the bonus, it was jaw-dropping. My mouth was literally wide open. We're not in it for the money. We're teachers because it's in our heart. But the bonus has been extremely helpful.

With the investment that Meta has made in our community, now we can do a better job of taking care of our home.

I do feel a lot of hope for the future of my students. It gives them the opportunity they never thought that they would have. I would say one of the biggest things is people coming back home.

The future's happening here and happening now.

You have some folks from the video here.

I do. Come on out. Come on out, Sheldon and Susan.

We have the superintendent from that video, the superintendent in Richland Parish. Thanks for joining us.

Pleasure.

Hi, sir. Thanks for joining us. Hi, how are you? Come on down.

Good to meet you. How are you?

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for having us.

You want to do an introduction?

Sure. What an honor. It's an honor for me to be here with Sheldon and Susan. We've spent a lot of time in Louisiana. It's our largest data center investment for Meta, and I've been with them in Louisiana. What is remarkable to me is just the leadership that, frankly, the governor has shown. Susan is the commerce secretary for Louisiana, the economic development secretary, and Sheldon—who I'm going to let speak for himself—is such an inspirational figure there. He is the one who realized that because of our investment, the tax surplus would go straight to teachers. Maybe you can talk just a little bit about that.

Yes. It's great to be here. I just think back to my first interaction with Meta. It was in the summer of 2024, and it was at our local community college. I just remember after the meeting getting in my car. It's hot in Louisiana, so I turned the air on, and I just sat there and said, “The game has changed.” This is going to give our parish an opportunity to do something that it's never been able to do.

When the groundbreaking ceremony happened in December of 2024, I could immediately start to see the increase in our sales tax collections. There are 6 taxing entities in our parish. The Richland Parish School Board collects 51% of the taxes for the district, so I was able to see the sales tax collections go from 5%–10%, which is normal for a school system, to about 60% or 70%. At that time, the number of workers at the data center site increased. Those collections peaked at about 260%. That's an increase in sales tax collections.

We have a 1-cent and a half-cent sales tax that's dedicated to employee salaries. We're announcing these sales tax increases at our school board meetings, and we're educators, so people can do the math. They start to figure out this is going to translate into a larger sales tax check, which directly goes into our salaries.

In December of 2025, we gave out a half-cent sales tax check. That check doubled from the previous year, so it went from roughly $4,000 to about $8,000. But we hadn't seen a full year of spiked increases in sales tax collections. That happened this past June. Our certified employees received an increase of about $40,000 in their sales tax—

$40,000 check.

They got a $50,000 check.

Wow.

The check the previous year was $10,000. So if you take that December increase and the June increase, it was a net of about $45,000 for our teachers.

The reason Dina and I were talking about this panel is that everyone hates data centers. They pull 80 in the United States. Dina was telling me the story, and I was like, “We should tell this story,” because it is unbelievable. Did the teachers and the community have this negative sentiment about data centers before? Were they all, “We hate data centers. We don't want them here”? Or was that before this wave happened, and the community didn't really pay much attention to it?

I think initially there was the unknown, and we are the beginning. We're a starting point. There was no reference for us to access. We couldn't say, “Okay, well, when was the last time we had a $50 billion capital investment in our schools?” So how did we handle that? A few million dollars—that's huge for us. There were anxious thoughts.

I think Meta has done an excellent job of informing us and educating us, and that's going to have to continue to happen. Oftentimes, this communication is not about the most informed person in the community. It's about the least informed person in the community. We're working to make sure that we continue to get that positive message out about the good things that are happening, because there are a lot of good things happening in our parish.

Yeah. I think, to the superintendent's point, Louisiana was a little bit late to the data center game, which has actually worked remarkably well to our benefit in that the Meta investment was the first one in the state. Because of the partnership—the way we negotiated the deal, I call it a partnership, not a negotiation, frankly, all along—the community, when we first brought the idea, even prior to you knowing, superintendent, wasn't apprehensive because there was a great deal of unknown.

Keep in mind, this was about 20 months ago, when we started the conversation there. The chatter wasn't as much as it is now. But you're talking about a community that was really starved for opportunity. As you saw in the video, we had lost population. The average wages in Richland Parish were roughly $36,000 to $38,000 a year prior to this investment.

The data center went to a place in Louisiana, a Mississippi River Delta parish. Obviously, it was longing for this opportunity, and we got ahead of that. I think we got ahead of that very wisely in the way we addressed both the concerns, the impact on the community, the good impact on the community, and the natural resources—all the things we're hearing.

In a weird way, all of this noise is actually somewhat beneficial, in the sense that you may just want to go to Dina and say, “We'll just take all your data centers,” because you can't—I mean, quite honestly—

I think our governor would actually continue to change the earnings potential of normal, average Americans.

Yeah.

The governor just signed an executive order a few months ago creating a framework for us under which we will engage with large-load users. The privilege it gives us now is we get to be choosy. We have a sales tax exemption, which is critical to be able to land an investment of this size and scale.

But now we get to really court who our partners are going to be, and the governor claims it all the time that Meta really was the prototype for us and it set a very high standard. That's now the standard we're going to follow. We are not one of those states that is saying no. We are one of those states that is saying yes.

2. How Meta is alleviating data center concerns: pollution, electricity, water, noise, aesthetics; Misinformation campaigns

Yeah. So maybe you could help us with the list of valid concerns communities have. One of them is pollution. I'm not sure if this is running off of gas or if it's all solar and renewables.

Increased electricity costs. Water: closed-loop versus non-closed-loop. Noise pollution and aesthetics. These buildings are typically awfully ugly as constructed. Did any of those apply? Did you get any of that feedback from the community?

You're a journalist.

What’s that?

You're a journalist.

No, no, no. Actually, it’s not journalism. It’s facts. These are the facts that community members have valid concerns about. Hold on, I’ll finish. There are people who have had data centers put next to them that are polluting and creating noise, and there are valid water concerns. There are communities where their electricity went up.

So, I’m asking a serious question based on facts. I’m wondering if any of those apply to you.

Yeah, Dina, you said this was going to be easy. Clearly, we’re all people, right? We all hear, and we all have the same concerns. Again, some of it was that we got very lucky with the timing of all this because those issues were addressed before they became public issues.

Number 1, this was farmland. This was agricultural land. Early on in the conversations with the Meta team, they made a decision to use a more expensive but more efficient system that actually uses less water than was being used on that land when it was being farmed. It’s not a statistic you hear very often.

The second piece is about energy. Clearly, we’re hearing it across the board, but there are 2 really critical components to this. Number 1 is that Louisiana has abundant natural gas. We have about 32,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in Louisiana today, if we don’t add another mile. So, we have access to natural gas everywhere.

But in the relationship that Meta created with Entergy, the energy provider there, from day 1—before this was an executive order from the president or even the governor—Meta paid for its own generation. It paid for grid resilience, grid upgrades, and storm costs. Louisiana has storm assessments when we have hurricanes. It happens every now and then. It’s paying for storm costs in a state where it didn’t operate when these hurricanes hit, so it’s actually taking burdens off of the Louisiana consumer.

All those issues were issues, and they were addressed with the original negotiated deal. I will say it’s really why it’s become the prototype for how we move forward with others.

This is a question for you. You used to be the deputy national security adviser, so answer this maybe with just a bit of that hat on. I mean, Jason brings up valid concerns, but then there’s this data that is so clear for you and for others. You just heard from Satya. Why is this misinformation campaign winning so soundly in America? What has happened? What is going on?

Sure. Well, I think, first, the questions that Jason raised are really legitimate questions. We start with a premise that if a community doesn’t want one of our data centers, they get to choose. They get to decide. But we actually have to explain upfront, and much more aggressively, what our investment and partnership means.

We have a compact—a compact that Susan and Sheldon are describing. First, don’t just pay for your own electricity. Make sure that you’re working to drive electricity costs down. The second is the water issue. It’s very real in farmlands and rural communities, but there’s absolutely new technology—in fact, AI-driven technology—that makes you able to actually increase water consumption.

The third is the teachers. I’ll be very honest: this was not our idea. This actually happened because this law allows, or in fact mandates, that every extra dollar of tax surplus goes directly to the teachers. The superintendent was telling me things that are just so remarkable. He used to have a hard time recruiting teachers. Now his phone is ringing off the hook throughout Louisiana, with teachers wanting to come there, and this may end up being the best school district in the entire state.

Now we have taken that learning, and we’re investing in teachers and first responders. You saw, of course, the economic development impact for small businesses. That’s our compact everywhere we go. Meta makes sure that we do those things.

But to answer your question, Chamath, I don’t think that our industry has done a good job communicating. Flat out, we have to do a better job. But before you can communicate anything, you’ve actually got to be meaningful and have real impact. We’ve started with the premise that we want to be the best actor and the best partner possible.

Now, having frankly seen the impact that we have in Louisiana, we’re very proud of the impact we’re having in Texas and Ohio. But I think we have to tell these stories more. I know you’re alluding to where this information is coming from. I was just with Chairman Cotton, Vice Chairman Mark Warner, and the intelligence committees. They do believe they have evidence that our adversaries are trying to gin this up.

I can’t comment on that, but what I can tell you is, if you wanted to stop America right now, what would you do? This is exactly what you would try to do. If you were any of our adversaries, you would want us to stop building data centers in the United States so that we would not be on a path to being AI-dominant in the world. This is what you would do.

Whether they’re doing it or not, this is definitely an approach you would take. I actually said to them very respectfully: these are great jobs, and the communities that want the jobs, want the teacher bonuses, and want these investments should be allowed to have them. Those that don’t should opt out. But we certainly don’t want our companies—my company and our peers—to start thinking about building data centers in the United States.

It’s so easy to debunk these issues. The water one is the one that’s just confounding. That narrative keeps staying alive. I think you did an amazing job.

There’s a clip on X of this woman with this bottle of dirty water that she trucks around, and you’re just like—

So good.

You know what I love? I love that it’s a federal republic that the founders designed. Some states are going to win, some states are going to be idiots and lose, and you guys are going to have this incredible economic advantage.

Yeah, I do want to add to Dina’s point as well. Just as the teachers are calling Sheldon to consider going to his parish to teach, the minute that got announced—that y’all were giving $50,000 bonuses—I can’t tell you how many leaders of rural parishes in Louisiana called me and said, “Secretary, do y’all have anyone who’s considering our parish? Please bring one here.”

So, the global narrative is not happening in Louisiana. I frankly don’t believe it’s happening everywhere the way the propaganda—

They’re calling you from across the country, with other states saying, “Is this real? How did this work?” They’re starting to lean in and see if they can participate.

Historically, one of the challenges we’ve had as a rural school system is that our best and our brightest will do exceptionally well in school. They may even go to our local universities, but when they leave, I have a good idea in my head that they’re not coming back to Richland Parish because we can’t offer jobs that attract them.

So, they leave and go to other states and other cities. Now we’re able to write our own narrative: if you want to leave and go, you can, but you don’t have to. We have opportunity here for you in Richland Parish. You have the ability to stay here and raise your family. I think it’s changing the narrative in our parish.

Well, Dina, I know you’ve got another video for us to watch also on how we get more workers to come and participate in this growing economy. While we watch that, why don’t we thank Susan and Sheldon for joining us? Thank you both for being here.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, that was great. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I appreciate you very much. I appreciate you coming out. Thank you so much.

3. America's Workforce Academy, the job growth in re-industrializing America

I’ve always wanted to do something big. I know that this is the program that I need to be in to discover that.

In order for a lot of technology to advance, we need the infrastructure. Meta is blessing these guys with the opportunity to be a part of that, to help lay the foundation for the future.

You can come into the program with no prior experience. After you finish your 4 weeks here, you’ll be able to go into the workforce. I’m grateful for this opportunity. I’m excited to actually get to do the work.

To have a group of students who are taking the opportunity seriously and are doing it with passion, that means everything.

Once they’re able to finish our course, there are so many different paths that they can take. The more that we learn and establish this workforce, the more we can impact future generations.

I feel like it will change the world. I’m ready to work.

You were telling me a story about a posting for a fiber-optic technician. Can you just tell that story? I think it’s incredible.

Sure. Even at our site in Louisiana, one of the issues is that we just can’t find enough workers. You really need a set of welders, pipe fitters, construction workers, and electricians. But there’s something that every data center site really needs: fiber technicians, the people who actually lay and splice the fiber.

We just could not find enough people. So, we made a curriculum and partnered with a few people, including CBRE and others.

And we realized that this program just didn’t exist. So we decided, if you can do it for fiber technicians, why not go beyond? It’s a 5-week, fast-track training program where you get all of your safety training. You get what’s called job-site ready, so you can get the job. We at Meta guarantee you a job if you graduate on one of our data center sites and have that certification with you, whether you want to stay at our site or elsewhere.

The missing piece is that while there are, as David Sacks has said over and over again, 500,000 open jobs for these roles over the next couple of years, there was this gap between people actually getting those jobs. It’s because it turns out that if you’re a waitress, an Uber driver, or a home healthcare worker, you live paycheck to paycheck. You cannot afford to take that time off unpaid. The training is weirdly very expensive—OSHA training and things like that. And what if you do that and you don’t get a job?

So we launched America’s Workforce Academy. We launched it—I don’t know—4 months ago. 40,000 Americans applied. We’ve graduated 250 people, and we have a 90% retention rate. People who are getting into these contractor jobs on our data center sites have learned a new trade. They’ve left behind a job that wasn’t as fulfilling, and every company that’s hiring them is thrilled.

It’s also something interesting, David, that you and I talked about, which is that we have partners across the board in this program. We didn’t put Meta in the name because we’re so excited to be working with other companies that are interested in recruiting these workers as well. We’re working with the unions. Sean McGarvey, the head of NABTU, is a friend, and we made a great partnership with him there. Some of those workers are on union sites, and some are nonunion.

An interesting voice that has emerged in this debate is the unions. The union leadership now is saying, “We want to be the anti-data-center backlash. These are our jobs. These are for our people.” So they put out, even before the midterms, a note saying they are only going to support candidates who support data centers.

How much balance-sheet capital does it take to get this thing off the ground, and do you see the other majors, the Big 8, joining forces and having this new educational track become a de facto standard in America?

You know, all of us are working on this. In fact, I just talked to Ruth Porat at Google. She’s done an incredible job on workforce, and she’s actually brought an alliance together. We’re going to join it. Larry Fink at BlackRock has joined the alliance. She’s bringing together other companies.

We might compete on models and products, but we don’t want to compete on people. As an industry, I think we’re doing this part well, where we’re really working together, because anybody who gets trained to work on a Meta data center site can certainly go to a Google site or a Microsoft site. So this is a place where we’ve really come together.

How do you expand the capacity? There are 40,000 who applied, but you picked 400.

Yeah. We started 4 months ago, and now we’re literally getting calls from Mary Barra at GM: “I’d like 1,000 employees.” Once you have the curriculum, the certification, and the partners to deliver it, you can do these everywhere. We’re doing them in community colleges and VFW halls. In that particular program, you actually have to have a site that’s kind of like a model data center so that you can show how to train the fiber technicians. But we’re working with Associated Builders and Contractors. They have thousands and thousands of places across the country where they operate.

Why is it so expensive outside of you guys basically backstopping this to get something like job-site ready and OSHA awareness? I mean, this should seem like you go online and—

I think the thing that we unlocked is that we actually pay during the training what you would get if you were already in the job. It used to be that there was a very low fee or an apprentice fee for so long that it wasn’t the full payment of the job. So we do that from the beginning.

David and I've been in Pittsburgh with some of these workers, and these are jobs. Welders make $120,000 a year in Pittsburgh. That is meaningful, great work. I think the unlock that we’re very proud of with this program is that there just wasn’t a clear and fast path to getting on the job site and having a guaranteed job.

It’s great that you have these jobs because, with AI progressing so quickly, these developers are going to need something to do. I think they can segue into electrician jobs. I’m kidding, obviously. Absolutely fantastic work on the data centers. Fully supported. Great job on the Meta glasses. Amazing. And this effort—

Where are your Meta glasses, Jason? I gave you such—

They’re right here in the bag, right in my backpack. No, they’re actually super impressive. And this effort—

This effort is truly impressive. But you said you wanted me to do a fastball or two, and you didn’t want it to—

She didn’t say that, JCal.

She literally asked me for at least one fastball.

JCal, fastball.

You did. Okay, so we’ll just keep it all softball before you ask your question. Please, please come back.

Go ahead, Jason.

4. Meta's recent social media settlement, new rules for teens

No, no, no. We can just go. We’ll go softballs. The boys prefer. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I mean, we have Meta here, and you just paid the largest settlement, second only to the tobacco industry and just ahead of BP oil, 2 of the biggest disasters this country ever faced. And this one is particularly tough—

And they wonder why they call him fake news.

No, my numbers are wrong. I’m happy to talk about the Meta glasses if you prefer.

I’m so glad. Go read your effective altruism.

I’m actually really glad you asked me about it because—

Yeah, well, no, let me finish the question. You may not be—so I’m going to lean in now, so to speak. The real challenge a lot of us have with Facebook as an organization—and these are amazing; the videos are super inspiring and well produced—is that you guys really did significant damage to children. You knew that these products were too addictive. And the philosophy of the company from the beginning, when Chamath was there, was, “Hey, move fast, break things. Let’s go super fast.”

My sincere question is: How has the culture changed inside of Facebook? You’re making a new series of potentially more addictive products, with character-based AI companions, with Muse as a product. So I’m curious: What’s changed in the organization, and what did you learn from that record-setting fine? What is something that you could have done a lot better on?

Well, I totally disagree with basically every single premise in your question.

Totally fine. A billion-dollar settlement says otherwise.

Do I get to speak, or are you done with your 10-minute question? Okay, I totally disagree with the premise of that.

I’ve only been there 8 months. I was on the board for a year, and I can tell you, because I work with these people every day, they are really, really focused on ensuring that parents are empowered and teens are supported. I couldn’t be more proud of the agreement that we just made. We made it with 52 bipartisan attorneys general across the United States and the territories, and we are now setting industry standards.

We agreed that if your state signed on with us, children under 18—not 16—can only be on our platform for 2 hours a day. The app shuts off after that, and it completely shuts off at night. There are no notifications during the school day at all, of any kind. Frankly, parents have way more supervision now, with many ways they can decide what their kids are on, how long they’re on, and what they’re seeing.

I think we’re proud of that because if others in our peer group joined, this could be pretty historic and game-changing. Jason, I’m a mom of 6 daughters, so this is really personal to me. I watched them grow up in this generation, and I feel that we really can find a way to come together.

The reason your numbers were wrong on the settlement is because we actually agreed to give an additional $5 billion and to go down to only 1 hour of use on our platform if YouTube, TikTok, and Snap join us. As we know, people leave one set of apps and go to another. But wouldn’t it be pretty amazing in America if children under 18 could only be on apps for an hour a day, shut off at night? I just think that’s—

100% yes.

Thank you.

Do you think it should be universal, Chamath, or do you think it should be controlled by the parent—give the parent basic controls? What’s your view?

Well, it is—meaning, obviously, a parent can override it, but our app actually just does turn off. Obviously, a parent—

It’s funny. I was in Texas this weekend at the Texas–Ohio State game, your alma mater. I had so many people come up to me and say, “You know this turning off? It’s literally happening. Turning off Instagram is hurting college football recruiting.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” In Texas, we put all of our kids’ videos on Instagram, and they get recruited.

So, it is interesting. I said, “Well, we live in America. That’s up to you. You can decide as a parent if you want to do more. It does actually shut off, and a parent has to override that.”

I think it’s incredible. I remember being with my kids at the dinner table, and my son was trying to show me something. He had hit the limit, and it just turned off. There was nothing, and I was like, “This is fantastic.” You’re like, “Leave it off.”

What’s that?

You’re like, “Just leave it off. You don’t care.”

The reason is, as a parent, it’s whack-a-mole.

Yeah.

The content is syndicated across all these platforms. When my 5 kids go to school, they interact with YouTube as their primary outside-of-school mechanism because so much of the school content and educational content is there. Even if you shut off Shorts and Instagram, they pop up over here.

So, it is this whack-a-mole problem for parents, and it’s a full-time job to manage it. If there is effectively labeling and a decision on governance by these companies, it’s deeply helpful for all of us who have jobs, are trying to live a life, and raise kids normally so they don’t become zombies.

Zach, you’re very active managing your kids’ mobile phone usage.

Yeah. How many do you have?

Look, I think the new defaults probably are better. Thinking about my kids’ usage, it would be nice if it turned off after an hour or 2. I think that’s an improvement.

I do have to defend Meta, because I think there was a little bit of a ridiculous pile-on where the company is getting sued by adults who are blaming the use of this completely voluntary product. No one’s forcing you to use any of these social network products, and then something goes wrong in their life that has many causes, and they’re suing Meta and winning big judgments. Then the state AGs get in on the act.

And the trial lawyers make money, I thought.

Yeah. So, let’s just acknowledge that there is a little bit of a shakedown going on here as well. Let’s face it, that is kind of how the American court system works.

But I think they have reached a resolution that is net beneficial, and I like the new defaults. Ultimately, this is about parental control. Parents should choose what apps their kids use and for how long. It should not be the government doing that. It should be the parents.

Dina, can you—

We should just make it as easy as possible for parents to do it. In my view, the only reason to do these new defaults is because of the whack-a-mole problem.

I’m glad we’re having this discussion. I think the issue for me has been that the industry got very addicted to gamification and designing products to be addicting. Increasing time spent on the app was, in fact, what Facebook was focused on internally.

The challenge is, you can be too good at something. I think Facebook, along with YouTube and their algorithms, were just too good at addicting people to it, whether they’re adults or kids. I will commend you, even if it was late, as an organization, for doing the right thing now and then leading the other organizations to do the right thing.

Let me build on what you were saying with this statement. Satya talked about this. I think Jensen will talk about it. Elon will talk about it. You’re going to hear this word RSI over and over over the next 18 months: recursive self-improvement.

This is the idea that if you define a function—a reward function—for an AI and let it go, it’s going to self-improve. So, to your point, Jason, anything, whether it’s World of Warcraft, Angry Birds, or whatever app, you put it into an RSI loop and add the reward function being time, and all these apps will proliferate. Microsoft Word will keep you there for 9 hours if it can.

Unless companies make a decision like you guys to say, “Here’s a threshold, and beyond this threshold we’re just going to turn it off,” it’s going to be kind of turtles all the way down.

5. Meta glasses and Zuck's AI strategy

Which was my point: How does it inform product decisions going forward? You’ve got this incredible new product, Muse. You’re in the mix on the bots. But, again, I think the leadership in challenging the other organizations is what I’ll give you kudos for.

You know, I don’t want to speculate. I want to talk about this addiction thing as it relates to the product that we all tried backstage. We all put on Meta glasses, and I had never used the product before. What do you think is the repeated use case for that product? What is it that gets people—?

Yeah. The glasses. Sorry. So, I remember when Google had the goggles and then Apple had VR, and everyone's had an effort at putting something on your face, and none of them have stickiness. They're all really interesting novelty experiences, and then your usage tapers off and you kind of put it in the drawer, and it's like a cool tech relic.

Well, they’re very stylish.

Yeah, these are the Kylie Jenners.

No, actually, we are so excited about this as a product. The engineers have been working on this for 10 years. You make a good point: If people don’t look good in them and they’re not stylish, they’re not going to put them on. But billions of people wear glasses, whether they’re to see or obviously sunglasses.

We’re really excited about the features. You can obviously listen to music. The only way I listen to All-In every week is wearing my Meta glasses as I’m walking or working out. They actually have incredible speakers, and your phone calls are perfect.

Now we have a couple of features we’re really excited about: conversation focus. So, when Chamath is at dinner with his beautiful wife and actually wants to hear her, if he looks at her, all the noise goes away except her voice, which is pretty cool. And then translation.

That’s great—translation as well.

Can I do the opposite when I’m—

Chamath? It’s interesting, Dina. It’s interesting you bring this up, Dina.

Great people I talk to. I’d like more of that.

Chamath is just telling me he got the new Apple AirPods 5 specifically because of wife-canceling.

The opposite. I want the opposite feature.

You can actually tune in. But let me tell you why you’re wrong and I’m right.

Okay, thanks.

By the way, with these products, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you design it poorly, no one’s going to want to use it. If you design it really well and it’s a big success, a bunch of trial lawyers are going to say it was addictive, and then you get sued for that.

So true.

Dina, can you—sorry, I just wanted to move to AI for a second—

No, I want to finish on this. It has this kind of recurrent use case built into it at this point, doesn’t it? I really want to understand—

The reason so many people are working on wearables—I mean, all of our peers are working on wearables—is that I do think people want to be part of the world. They don’t want to be holding boxes while walking around. They really want to be able to talk to their family, take a picture, take a video, listen to music, and have it be hands-free.

We have Oakleys that are really cool for extreme sports. The use cases are just everyday life. I think you’re going to show a video. The thing that surprised us was one use case that we hadn’t anticipated: blind veterans.

Somebody was joking with me. They said, “How are you getting blind people to wear glasses? That doesn’t make sense to me.” But can we show this video?

It is such an honor to be here. We’re in Austin, Texas, at a VFW hall where MetaMates are sitting down with amazing men and women who’ve served our country and lost their eyesight. They’ve just been telling us they feel like they’re getting their independence back, and we’re so proud to be giving them Meta glasses.

I took them to church. They have the scriptures on the screen in front, and I’ve never been able to read that. But I asked Meta, and it read it word for word for me.

Seeing these extraordinary servicemen and women, all we’ve been saying is, “Thank you. Thank you.” We don’t have America without all of them.

As a big surprise, we’re about to introduce them to Chris Stapleton.

I just want to come by and say thank you for all your service. We’re so grateful for you.

Chris Stapleton’s the best. He came and joined us. It was actually on 9/11, just a couple of days ago.

What we learned is that a group of blind veterans from the organization that supports them came and actually worked with the Meta engineers and designed specific features. It turns out, obviously, that the glasses can see for you and read to you.

One of the gentlemen I was sitting next to put the glasses on and said, “Hey Meta, call John.” I was sitting there, and I couldn’t hear what he was hearing. He just started sobbing. I said, “Is everything okay, sir?” He said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever called my son independently, on my own.”

Wow.

So, we’re seeing these kinds of use cases, of course, that we’re incredibly proud of.

I guess AI creates the unlock for the glass form factor. That makes a lot of sense. Is that the form factor that you think gets AI into a prevalent way for most people in the world—the glasses form factor—or is there something else you think?

I’m sure there will be many products. I think what I have learned from our team is that glasses are a thing people wear. Many, many people wear them. They're affordable, and we obviously worked really hard. Mark was very focused not just on the design but the weight of it. It takes a lot to put the technology in here and to still keep it stylish.

I think you're a minority owner of Ray-Ban.

No.

Or it looks like the brand partner.

Yeah. We have an exclusive with—

I think that's why people should reconsider these as a product category, because I've had them since Google Glass. The battery never worked. They were too bulky. You looked like a dork in them. And now the battery works, and because you can control them—not with Siri, which is still kind of broken, but this actually works—when you're with your kids and you want to take videos when you're skiing or you want to take pictures, putting a phone between you is much more intrusive.

So I think this actually brings you into the real world. The translation feature is also very slick. When you go to Japan or somewhere and they're talking to you in another language, it can actually translate. Or if you see a sign, boom, instant translation without taking your phone out. It's time for people to reconsider these, specifically for those reasons.

Yeah.

You've used them a long time, though, so you really know.

Yeah. The battery problem, the fidelity—they just didn't work, and now they do. Yeah. So—

Dina, just talking about Dario's essay this weekend, there was a report—but it was unverified—that Zuck said something to the effect of, "We need to go as fast as we can." I don't know if that was misinformation. No, no, it was a report that just hit Twitter at the same time as Dario's essay on X. But, just taking a step back broadly, how did you process that essay and the call for regulation, or how are you guys thinking about this?

Sure. Well, first, I really agree with a lot of what Satya said. The premise, the starting point, is that safety is paramount, and that is something that Mark talks about all the time. I watch daily how he and Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman, who run our lab, think about it, and there's a whole team of people who exist to think about the safety of the models. I think there are very legitimate questions around that.

I think the difference is that Mark just has a very different view, and I think that view is based on 20 years of a business model of empowering and connecting people, and that 3.6 billion people are on our platform every single day. 200 million small business owners operate their business every single day. His belief is that the more you distribute this technology, the more people who have superintelligence and are able to reach their potential are able to have access to education and health care that they could have never imagined before, and learning that they could have never achieved before, is not only better for each of those individuals, but it's better for society as a whole.

So he fundamentally just believes, when he wrote in his piece, "The Future Is for Everyone," that the democratization of artificial intelligence will actually lead to a more stable society. That is just a fundamental belief that he has, and I think the thing that he thinks about is: So then what is his role? What is our role? I think we were extremely proud to have the very first American open-source model—

Just a few weeks ago. Well, Dina, you've got a lot on your plate. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and join us today. We covered a lot. It was awesome. Thank you for being here.

Thank you guys so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

You're welcome. That was great.