Companies owned by Meta (Facebook)

Meta Inc. (FB), the owner of Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, was founded in 2004 by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several Harvard College roommates. Its name changed to Facebook before changing its name to Meta again in October 2021. Zuckerberg and his co-founders first launched the service for their Harvard classmates and quickly expanded it to other universities before rolling it out to the public. The company has since grown into a global giant with 2.8 billion users and a $926.8 billion market cap. The company reported fiscal 2020 net income of $29.1 billion on sales of $84.1 billion, almost entirely from advertising.

Since its founding 16 years ago, Meta has grown far beyond its original social networking platform. Its products also include instant messaging services, photo and video sharing, augmented reality, and many other applications and services.  Acquisitions have been key to these businesses and Meta’s overall revenue growth. Meta’s strategy is to acquire potential competitors before they get too big. The company paid sky-high prices for some deals. The company also brought potential anticompetitive behavior to the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which recently requested data on unreported purchases by Meta and other big tech companies.

Below, we take a closer look at Meta’s 5 biggest acquisitions. The company did not provide a breakdown of how much profit or revenue each acquisition currently contributes to Meta.

Instagram

• Business Type: Photo and Video Sharing Apps
• Acquisition cost: $1 billion
• Acquisition Date: April 9, 2012

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking platform launched in 2010. The Instagram app allows users to upload, edit and tag photos and videos. The company remained independent until it was acquired by its parent company Meta for $1 billion in 2012.

In acquiring Instagram, Meta chose to develop and grow the Instagram app independently of Meta’s main platform, Facebook. Today, Instagram is still an independent platform. The price 5 Meta paid for Instagram, which was not generating revenue at the time, reflected the premium Meta was willing to pay for early-stage companies.

Oculus VR

• Company Type: Virtual Reality Technology Company
• Acquisition cost: $2 billion
• Date of acquisition: March 25, 2014

Just weeks after announcing its acquisition of WhatsApp, Meta followed suit with the acquisition of virtual reality hardware and software company Oculus VR. Founded in 2012, the company is best known for its product, the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset designed for video games. The subsidiary has made several acquisitions since Facebook bought Oculus VR in 2014. Perhaps most prominently, the 2015 acquisition of Surreal Vision, a company specializing in 3D scene-mapping reconstruction

When Meta acquired Oculus VR, the company only produced development prototypes of its popular headset product. Meta’s acquisition of Oculus VR made it famous in the virtual reality market at a time when developers were showing increasing interest in VR.

Whatsapp

• Business Type: Mobile SMS Service
• Acquisition cost: $19 billion
• Date of acquisition: February 19, 2014

WhatsApp is a messenger and calling service provided to users around the world. The platform was launched in 2009 as a low-cost alternative to standard SMS services. For most of its history, WhatsApp has allowed users to message and make calls directly to other users for free, regardless of location. Users can also send photos, videos and documents through the platform. When Meta acquired WhatsApp, the smaller company had more than 400 million monthly active users, making it a potential competitor to Facebook’s fast-growing web platform.

When Meta acquired WhatsApp, it was an independent company that was most recently valued at $1.5 billion. While it’s unclear exactly how much revenue WhatsApp will generate, some estimates put it at as much as $5 billion by 2020.

Beluga

• Business Type: Messaging Service
• Acquisition Cost: Undisclosed
• Acquisition Date: March 2, 2011

Messaging app Beluga was founded in 2010 and was acquired by Meta a year later. Meta acquired Beluga for an undisclosed sum during the startup’s fundraising process. By acquiring Beluga, Facebook acquired the technology that would eventually become the social media company’s wildly successful messaging platform. In doing so, Meta has again expanded its reach and eliminated a potential competitor.

Onavo

• Business Type: Mobile Network Analysis
• Acquisition cost: $10-200 million (estimate)
• Acquisition Date: October 2013

Founded in 2010, Israeli company Onavo conducts web analytics on other mobile apps to determine customer usage. Meta acquired Onavo in October 2013 for an undisclosed sum, which some analysts put at between $100 million and $200 million. At the time of the acquisition, Onavo was an independent company. While Onavo isn’t one of Meta’s biggest acquisitions, Onavo’s technology may allow Meta to make important decisions early on in acquiring other companies and applications. Onavo has occasionally been flagged as spyware, forcing Meta to remove Onavo from the iOS and Android app stores in the face of criticism.

Facebook Diversity and Inclusion Transparency

As part of our efforts to raise awareness of the importance of diversity in our business, we have highlighted the transparency of Meta’s commitment to diversity, inclusion and social responsibility. The graphic below illustrates how Meta reports on the diversity of its management and employees. This indicates whether Meta has disclosed data about the diversity of its board, senior management, senior management and employees as a whole. We marked this transparency with a.