Meta accounting move on AI servers to boost profit this year

The change extends the so-called useful life period of certain servers and networking assets to five and a half years, from the four to five years it previously used. — Bloomberg

SAN FRANCISCO: Meta Platforms Inc made a small change last month that’s likely to increase the company’s profit by billions of US dollars this year.

It wasn’t the release of a new product or cost cuts. It was a tweak to an accounting formula used to measure the depreciation of its expensive artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.