Meta Just Launched a New Subscription Business Built Entirely Around AI. Here's Why It Could Be a Game-Changer.

Last month, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a 6,500-word manifesto outlining his vision of free artificial intelligence agents, and global access to AI -- with options for people willing to pay more for extra features or computing power.

Now this week, we're learning a little bit more about what Zuckerberg thinks that should look like.

Meta introduced a new subscription service, Meta One, that provides expanded AI usage and other premium features across Meta's family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

"Meta One gives subscribers more self-expression features and AI usage, helps creators spend more time creating and less time guessing, and gives businesses new tools designed to help them grow," the company said in an article posted on its website. "The core experience across our apps and Meta AI has always been free, and that's not changing. Subscriptions unlock more specialized capabilities and expanded AI usage that go beyond what a free experience built for billions can offer."

Image source: Getty Images.

The plans build on single-product subscription plans that the company introduced earlier this year, starting at $2.99 per month for WhatsApp Plus and $3.99 per month for Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus. Under the Meta One bundled subscription, individual users can get a core subscription for $7.99 a month or a premium subscription for $19.99 a month.

Businesses and content creators can get plans ranging from $14.99 per month for basic options to $499 per month for the highest-tier features.

Meta needs another source of revenue

Subscription services have long been an ideal way for companies to get a consistent revenue stream. You've seen it with companies as diverse as Costco Wholesale, Netflix, Adobe, and Tesla.

And Meta could definitely use the money. The company spent $31.08 billion in the second quarter on capital expenditures to build out its artificial intelligence infrastructure that powers its Llama large language model, and AI features for its family of apps. Total expenses for the quarter totaled $42.03 billion, up 55% from the same period a year ago.

Meta is projected to spend between $130 billion and $145 billion on capex this year, or about double its spending from a year ago. And that spending is straining the company's finances and cash flow.

META Free Cash Flow (Quarterly) data by YCharts

Fortunately, for Meta, its revenue increased 28% in the last quarter to $60.8 billion, so net income fell only 15% despite the higher spending. But almost all of Meta's revenue comes from advertising, which makes finding another source of income -- such as subscriptions -- even more appealing.

Source: Meta Platforms

Reality Labs -- the business once charged with building Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse, where people would purportedly work and play, has utterly failed to be that revenue stream; the business lost $4.62 billion in the second quarter.

The bottom line on Meta stock

Meta puts its subscription revenue on the "Other Revenue" line on its income statement, and CFO Susan Li told analysts on the company's earnings call that subscription revenue was behind that segment's 73% year-over-year growth with about 15 million subscriptions and trials. The company is also experimenting with Meta Business Agent on both WhatsApp and Messenger as a freemium offering, allowing businesses to send a limited number of messages for free. It also announced a plan to charge per token for Meta Business Agent messages.

Analysts surveyed by Yahoo! Finance are expecting Meta to generate about $73.66 billion in revenue in the third quarter, up about 23.5% from a year ago, and full-year revenue of $254.1 billion, up 26.4%.

I'll be watching the "Other Revenue" line on Meta's financial sheets carefully in Q3. If the company starts seeing marked growth in its subscription services, indicating it could eventually become a $10 billion business, then I think it has a lot of potential to help Meta's bottom line.

Anything the company can do to offset its AI expansion costs will help its shareholders and, hopefully, lift the stock price out of its year-long funk.

Patrick Sanders has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Costco Wholesale, Meta Platforms, Netflix, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.