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Greetings! The days of “No ads! No games! No gimmicks!” are over. That was the slogan coined by one of the founders of WhatsApp, Brian Acton, which the other founder of the messaging app, Jan Koum, used to keep taped to his desk on a sticky note. On Monday, though, WhatsApp’s owner, Meta Platforms, said the app will start showing ads for the first time in the coming months, turning on a potentially significant new revenue spigot. The news seemed to thrill investors, who drove Meta’s shares up almost 3%. How big can that business be for the company? For years, Wall Street has badgered Meta executives about their plans for making money from WhatsApp. In response, one of the things they’ve pointed to is click-to-message advertisements, which appear on Facebook and Instagram and redirect users to WhatsApp, where they can chat directly with businesses. That has turned into a decent business for the company: In early 2023, Meta said click-to-message advertising was on track to generate $10 billion in annual revenue that year. Initially, Meta doesn’t seem like it’s going to try to maximize the money it could make from the ads that will begin appearing directly on WhatsApp. It won’t show the ads on all parts of the app, limiting them for now to a section called updates, which is separate from private messages. They could be less targeted than ads on Facebook and Instagram, given the messaging app’s additional privacy concerns, which means they may make less money. Meta said it will be rolling out the ads slowly over the next several months, perhaps to ease the shock for users accustomed to an ad-free WhatsApp over its 16-year history. But if WhatsApp is anything like its sibling company, Instagram, its haul could eventually be massive. Instagram generated $32.4 billion in advertising revenue in 2021, eight years after it started showing ads. In the past, at least, WhatsApp’s audience has been bigger than that of Instagram: It had 2.07 billion active monthly users compared to Instagram’s 1.51 billion in April 2021, according to internal Meta data disclosed in a legal filing this May. WhatsApp’s audience is likely still bigger than Instagram’s. With its ever-growing investments in artificial intelligence, Meta could use a hand from WhatsApp to replenish its coffers. If Apple wants to figure out how to satisfy Donald Trump’s repeated demands to make iPhones in the U.S., CEO Tim Cook should pay attention to the president’s two eldest sons, who appear to have suddenly become experts in onshoring electronics production. The $499 Trump phone, which the president’s two eldest sons revealed on Monday alongside a Trump-branded cellular service, purports to have the specs of a relatively premium smartphone, including a 50-megapixel camera and 256 gigabytes of memory. What’s surprising is that, according to the Trump Mobile website, the golden device is “proudly designed and built in the United States.” Currently, there’s just one smartphone for sale that meets the Federal Trade Commission’s standards to label itself as “Made in the USA,” according to 404 Media. Even though the device has less memory and a worse camera than the Trump phone, it retails for $2,000. The idea that the Trump Organization could produce a fancier phone for a quarter of the price seems a bit farfetched. But regardless of where the Trump phone is actually made, it has one feature I wish Apple would copy: a headphone jack!—Theo Wayt • OpenAI has considered publicly accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior, as the two parties wrangle over the terms of OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit company, The Wall Street Journal reported. • Trump Media & Technology Group has filed paperwork to launch an exchange-traded fund that plans to invest in bitcoin and ethereum. AI Agenda by Stephanie Palazzolo separates hype from reality and explains how AI is transforming industries. The 4x/week newsletter details the innovation and disruption happening in AI, from the AI startup funding frenzy to the major technological breakthroughs that will set the agenda for decades to come. Sign up today. | 
