Meta One: Zuckerberg finally puts a price tag on all that AI spending

Meta is rolling out paid add-ons for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp worldwide while building a separate paid AI offering. The move is meant to reduce the company's dependence on ad revenue and likely to justify its massive AI infrastructure spending to investors.

Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus cost $3.99 a month, WhatsApp Plus runs $2.99. The perks are mostly cosmetic: story stats, custom icons, and super reactions. Meta's existing verification program, Meta Verified, stays separate.

The more interesting part is the AI pricing. Meta One Plus ($7.99) and Meta One Premium ($19.99) follow the same model OpenAI and Google use, with users paying for more compute, longer reasoning from the model, and more image and video generation.

Testing starts next month in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia. Plans aimed at creators and businesses ($14.99 and $49.99) are launching in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand, and Bangladesh.