Meta has already spent billions on developing artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, the company said it would spend as much as $40 billion this year, much of it going toward data centers, chip designs and research.

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Just before the announcement, Meta rolled out smart assistants across its platforms. The assistants are powered by the company’s A.I. language model, which can generate prose, conversations and images.

It is the latest way Meta is trying to make good on the promise of its leader, Mark Zuckerberg, to introduce A.I. software “to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful.”

But despite Meta’s bullishness on the technology — and despite the 27 percent increase in the company’s revenue and profit, its best ever in the first quarter — there were some caveats.

Meta said it anticipated second-quarter revenue to be lower than analysts had expected. Those words of caution appeared to unsettle investors, who sank Meta’s stock by more than 16 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday afternoon.

Zuckerberg urged patience, telling analysts that stock volatility was not uncommon at times when Meta was “scaling a new product” but not yet making money from it.

But patience may be wearing thin, as the company continues to burn billions on his vision for the metaverse, the immersive virtual world that he unveiled more than two years ago and has had a rocky start.

Read more about Meta’s A.I. push:

• Meta Says It Plans to Spend Billions More on A.I.
  
• Meta, in Its Biggest A.I. Push, Places Smart Assistants Across Its Apps