Meta’s 2025: a year of AI assistants, power-hungry data centres and smart glasses
From AI assistants to smart glasses, the Facebook owner's year has been busy
Meta has put out a big end-of-year style rundown of what it has been working on in 2025, and it covers pretty much everything you would expect from the company right now: artificial intelligence, data centres, smart glasses and a long list of safety and product tweaks across its apps.
On the AI side, Meta says it launched the Meta AI app, a personalised assistant built on its latest Llama 4 model. Inside that app it also added Vibes, a feed of AI-generated videos. Back in March, Meta said Llama hit one billion downloads, which it clearly sees as a milestone worth flagging. Around the same time, it released a batch of research models, including SAM 3, SAM 3D, SAM Audio and V-JEPA. Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also used the moment to talk up his longer-term vision of what he calls “personal superintelligence”.
A lot of the heavy lifting this year has been physical rather than digital. Meta broke ground on three new data centres, including an AI-optimised facility in El Paso, Texas that can scale up to one gigawatt of power. Another site in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin became the company’s 30th data centre. Two more centres came online, and Meta struck a deal with Constellation Energy to generate nuclear power to help run its growing infrastructure.
The company says those projects are not just about servers. It continued to hand out Data Center Community Action Grants, backed local infrastructure projects and supported thousands of construction and operations jobs. At the Open Compute Project Global Summit, Meta also shared new open hardware designs and pitched a framework for making hardware more sustainable.
Then there are the glasses. Meta introduced four new pairs of AI-powered eyewear this year. The headline product is Meta Ray-Ban Display, which it calls its most advanced pair yet, complete with a full-colour, high-resolution display and an EMG wristband that turns muscle signals into commands. Meta says that the approach could be particularly useful for people with disabilities. It also released Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 with better battery life and video quality, Oakley Meta HSTN as its first performance-focused AI glasses, and Oakley Meta Vanguard, aimed at high-intensity sports with hands-free music, calls, video capture and pace tracking.
Safety and policy updates made up another big chunk of the year. Meta says it strengthened protections for Teen Accounts, added age-based content settings inspired by movie ratings on Instagram, and rolled out stricter options for parents. It also introduced parental controls for how teens interact with AI, took legal action against companies behind so-called nudify apps, and partnered with schools to tackle cyberbullying.
On the product side, the list keeps going. Meta launched Edits, a new app for video creation and editing. Instagram picked up features like reposts and Reels blend, and Reels made its way to TV. Direct messages got scheduled messages and QR codes. Threads added new features, WhatsApp expanded support and translation, and Community Notes rolled out across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Taken together, Meta’s recap paints a picture of a company pushing hard on AI and hardware, while still tweaking the social apps billions of people use every day. It is a reminder that for all the talk about the metaverse and superintelligence, Meta’s year has been just as much about concrete things: power, glass, safety settings and the unglamorous work of keeping massive platforms running.
The Recap
- Meta summarised major AI, infrastructure, and product milestones for 2025.
- Introduced four new pairs of AI glasses with EMG wristband.
- Broke ground on three data centres and expanded energy agreements.
