WhatsApp now has greater than 3 billion folks utilizing it each month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg famous in the course of the firm’s Q1 outcomes convention name on Wednesday.

Based in 2009 and purchased by Fb for $19 billion in 2014, WhatsApp stays free to make use of and doesn’t serve any advertisements. The app reached the 2 billion monthly active user mark back in 2020, however with the most recent milestone, it’s now one of many few apps to cross the 3 billion user mark, besides Facebook.

That humongous person base makes WhatsApp a key enterprise for Meta, particularly now as the corporate has wager the farm on its AI technique. The corporate has beforehand stated that the app is one of its biggest distribution platforms for AI providers.

“We see folks interact with Meta AI from a number of completely different entry factors. WhatsApp continues to see the strongest Meta AI utilization throughout our household of apps,” Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, stated in the course of the convention name. She additionally famous that the majority WhatsApp customers interact with Meta AI in one-on-one chats.

Zuckerberg stated that whereas WhatsApp gives quick access to AI options, Meta has needed to take a special strategy to spur adoption of its AI merchandise in markets just like the U.S., the place nearly all of folks nonetheless favor to make use of their telephones’ inventory messaging apps to textual content one another. That’s the place the corporate’s newly released Meta AI app is available in.

“We hope to turn into the chief over time [in the U.S. messaging market], however we’re in a special place there than we’re in a lot of the remainder of the world on WhatsApp. So I believe that the Meta AI app as a standalone goes to be significantly necessary in america to determine management in — as the primary private AI that individuals use. However we’re going to maintain on advancing the experiences throughout the board in all of those completely different areas,” he stated.

The corporate stated the chat app’s enterprise platform, WhatsApp Enterprise, is rising, and accounted for a big portion of the $510 million in income introduced in by its household of apps.

Meta has been testing AI tools for WhatsApp Business, and Li stated on Wednesday that the corporate is constructing a brand new AI agent administration interface and dashboard that may let companies prepare Meta’s AI on their data. That data may embrace a enterprise’ web site, WhatsApp profile, or their Instagram and Fb web page. It’s additionally testing letting companies activate Meta’s AI chatbot in chats with clients.