Nearly everyone seems to be suddenly freaking out about the rise of DeepSeek. Meta isnt worried, though.That was CEO Mark Zuckerbergs message to investors during his companys fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. During the Q&A portion of the call with Wall Street analysts, Zuckerberg fielded multiple questions about DeepSeeks impressive AI models and what the implications are for Metas AI strategy. He said that what DeepSeek was able to accomplish with relatively little money has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing to be focused on.Zuckerberg noted that theres a number of novel things they did were still digesting and that Meta plans to implement DeepSeeks advancements into Llama. DeepSeek caused a massive sell-off in AI stocks due to fears that models will no longer need as much computing power. Zuckerberg tried to dispel concerns that the billions of dollars hes spending on GPUs will go to waste: I continue to think that investing very heavily in CapEx and infra is going to be a strategic advantage over time.His argument is in line with the growing consensus that computing resources will move from the training phase of AI development towards helping models better reason. In Zuckerbergs own words, this doesnt mean you need less compute because you can apply more compute at inference time in order to generate a higher level of intelligence and a higher quality of service. Meta is gearing up to release Llama 4 with multimodal and agentic capabilities in the coming months, according to Zuckerberg. He expects Metas AI assistant to reach one billion users this year.He also took a thinly veiled jab at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other unprofitable startups by noting that Meta has a strong business model to support the roughly $60 billion it will spend on AI this year versus others who dont necessarily have business models to support it on a sustainable basis.Zuckerberg also made sure to praise President Donald Trump. We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and will defend our values and interests abroad, he said. Moments before the earnings call started, news broke that Meta is paying Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company for banning his account after the January 6th insurrection. (The vast majority of the money is going to pay for Trumps presidential library.)Meanwhile, Meta is a cash-printing machine. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $48.39 billion a 22-percent increase from the year-ago period while net profit was a staggering $20.8 billion (up 43-percent from a year before). During the earnings call, CFO Susan Li said that Meta hasnt seen any noticeable impact from its content policy changes on ad spending. 3.35 billion people used at least one of Metas apps daily in the fourth quarter a 5-percent increase from the year-ago period.See More: