What We Learned This Week

Ads on WhatsApp: It’s been a long time coming, but Meta officially announced this week that it will begin introducing ads on WhatsApp. Meta (then Facebook) acquired WhatsApp more than 11 years ago for $19 billion, and ever since, it’s been viewed as one of the company’s most under-monetized assets. While WhatsApp isn’t nearly as prominent in the U.S.—thanks to the iPhone’s dominance—it's virtually ubiquitous abroad, with over 2 billion monthly active users, making it by far the most widely used messaging app on the planet.

Despite that reach, Meta has never meaningfully monetized the platform. The app has always been free, with no traditional ad placements or subscription models. Up to this point, the most Meta could say was that WhatsApp expanded its global ecosystem and helped drive more user activity across the broader platform, sometimes through features that let businesses launch chats via ads elsewhere. But this week marks a shift. Meta will start rolling out status ads (shown only in the “Updates” tab to avoid disrupting core messaging) and is also exploring monetization of WhatsApp Channels through search ads and subscriptions. The rollout is intentionally limited, and for good reason. Messaging apps are sensitive territory; one misstep with ads could alienate users quickly. But if Meta gets it right, this opens up an entirely new revenue stream from one of its most scaled yet untapped assets.

AI Headcount Reductions: More commentary continues to emerge around AI’s long-term impact on corporate headcounts. This week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said he expects AI adoption to reduce the size of Amazon’s corporate workforce in the years ahead. His comments were part of a broader discussion acknowledging that while AI will reduce labor needs in some areas, it will also increase demand in others. But netting it out, headcount is expected to shrink.

Amazon has already been deploying AI across logistics and fulfillment, with plans to expand that further. Since 2022, the company has laid off more than 27,000 employees, yet still employs over 1.5 million people globally. They're not alone. Shopify and Klarna have also openly cited AI efficiency gains as reasons for reduced hiring or headcount. While many companies have been careful to downplay this trend publicly, the reality is that these tools are being built to create operating leverage, which almost always involves doing more with fewer people. There will be areas of growth, but overall, the push toward AI is about efficiency, not just innovation for innovation’s sake. It raises real questions about how job markets evolve, what roles remain in demand, and how geography plays into talent decisions when high-cost markets become harder to justify.

Airline Disaster: A quick note on the tragic Air India disaster last week. Obviously, an awful situation. And while much has already been said about the human impact, attention quickly turns to figuring out who’s to blame. Given Boeing’s checkered safety record in recent years, and the fact that this was one of their planes, there’s been some immediate finger-pointing. But based on what we know so far, it seems unlikely this was a Boeing-specific issue.

The aircraft involved was a 787 Dreamliner, a model that’s been in service for nearly 15 years without a major incident, hardly the profile of a fundamentally flawed platform. Early reports suggest the engines lost power, and those are manufactured by a separate company. Maintenance history also plays a crucial role in events like this, and those details remain unclear. It could very well have been an extremely rare, unforeseen failure unrelated to design or manufacturing. At this point, there’s simply not enough information to draw firm conclusions. While Boeing is an easy target right now, it’s worth reserving judgment until the facts are fully understood.