Meta’s quest to be like Apple

Hullo, it’s Alex in London. Apple and Meta have something in common and not just headsets. But first...Three things you need to know today:• [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hullo, it’s Alex in London. Apple and Meta have something in common and not just headsets. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Amazon laid off [hundreds in health care]( • Snap reported [disappointing revenue]( • DocuSign will cut about [6% of staff]( Buybacks With each passing month, Meta Platforms Inc. becomes just a little bit more like Apple Inc. There’s the competition, of course, in headsets. [Apple’s Vision Pro]( — starting at $3,500 — is very much targeting the top end of the market while Meta’s Quest costs as little as $245. Over time, though, those markets are likely to converge as Apple’s devices become cheaper. What I’m really talking about is the way that the companies manage their finances. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg had declared 2023 as the “[year of efficiency](,” a euphemism for reducing costs by, among other measures, firing people — almost 20,000, at the most recent count. It’s clear that the company over-hired, and it was tough on those who lost their jobs as a consequence. But the correction has yielded significant financial improvements. When Meta revealed its earnings last week, quarterly net profit for the year had jumped 27% to $22 billion. While Apple hasn’t been laying people off in quite the same way, the focus on efficiency is characteristic of the company under Tim Cook. The iPhone maker famously manages costs extremely tightly — particularly with its suppliers — and you can see the results. Because even as revenue growth slowed to just 2.1% in the December quarter, profit still jumped by 13%. By keeping costs down and focusing on more profitable products such as the higher-end iPhones and the services business, Apple is able to wring more profit out of every dollar of sales. When it comes to how it spends those profits, Meta is also taking a page out of Apple’s playbook. Zuckerberg announced a [$50 billion share buyback]( alongside the earnings report. Massive buybacks are a tenet of Apple’s approach to corporate finance: It’s returned close to $400 billion to shareholders through such repurchases over the past five years. Meta has bought back $124 billion in the same period. For Meta, the buyback alongside the better-than-expected earnings prompted the biggest one-day jump in market value for any stock on record. Meta’s 20% increase on Friday equated to a mind-boggling $197 billion, [topping the record]( set by Apple in 2022 and making Meta a trillion-dollar company again. And it gave Zuckerberg a little bit of cover to keep investing in pet projects like the “metaverse.” There’s a new default setting for a lot of tech companies. At least [32,000 tech workers]( have been dismissed so far this year, according to a report this week. With revenue growth seeming to slow for most businesses not called Nvidia Corp. and high interest rates making investors less focused on growth than before, costs are front and center. That’s a new mindset to which some are having to adapt the hard way. —[Alex Webb](mailto:awebb25@bloomberg.net) The big story Meta will begin detecting and labeling AI-generated posts to [prevent misinformation and deception from spreading]( across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Some of the standards Meta is working on implementing, alongside other tech companies, include adding invisible watermarking and metadata to images. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV analysis]( of AI’s potential impact on elections. Get fully charged The Dutch intelligence agency said it uncovered a Chinese-state-backed [attempt at cyber espionage](. Saudi Arabia named a former Dell executive to lead a new [$100 billion investment firm](. Fireblocks, a crypto custody platform, laid off less than 3% of its staff [as part of a restructuring](. Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences unit, hired health veteran Myoung Cha as [chief product officer](. Private equity firm Permira hired three banks to assess options including a sale of Best Secret, a German fashion retail club that could be valued at [more than $4.3 billion](. 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