A new internal communications document from Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) shows that the company is about to launch brick-and-mortar locations and hire store staff shortly.
What Happened: Meta's internal memo, reviewed by Business Insider, outlines plans for growing its retail footprint. Currently, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company runs a single store in Burlingame, California, which opened in 2022.
Details about timing and store count are not available at the moment. Earlier, Meta tested the waters with a Los Angeles pop-up featuring its smart glasses.
Why It Matters: A more robust retail presence could enable Meta to compete more strongly with rivals like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), which has more than 500 stores worldwide.
Meta's hardware line, including Quest VR headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses, could reap the benefit of direct consumer engagement.
Zuckerberg admitted that while smart glasses sold over a million units in 2024, that alone won't "move the needle and the business in a core way." He said 2025 would show whether the product category becomes a "long-term grind" or turns into a "really prominent computing platform."
Another recently-issued internal memo reveals that Meta's products team will be split into two distinct divisions, with an AI-focused team led by Connor Hayes and an AGI Foundations unit led by Ahmad Al-Dahle and Amir Frenkel.
This comes just as Meta's AI assistant reaches one billion monthly active users, according to Zuckerberg's remarks at Wednesday's annual shareholder meeting.
Price Action: At the time of writing, Meta shares were down 0.47% pre-market, after closing 0.23% higher at $645.05 during Thursday's regular trading session, as per Benzinga Pro data.
According to Benzinga Edge rankings, Meta scores 88.04 in momentum, 35.09 in value, 92.83 in growth and 83.63 in quality.