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Snap's Research and Development Expenditure (2015 - 2021)

Industry: Internet Services; Social Media
Current: Company Performance

Snap spent $1.57 billion on research and development (R&D) in Q1 2022
In Q4 2021, the R&D expenditure was $1.1 billion
Snap spends a considerable amount on developing its Advertising products

Snap’s research and development (R&D) expenditure in 2021 was $1.57 billion, an increase of nearly $463.9 million as compared to the R&D expenditure in 2021. The increase was primarily driven by greater personnel expenses due to growth in research and development headcount, including increased cash- and stock-based compensation expenses. To keep the users engaged, the Snapchat platform focuses its efforts on product innovation. The research and development expenditure focuses on the following three segments:

Product development and technology:

Snap spends a considerable amount on the development and research of new technologies required for visual communication and storytelling. Snap has introduced a variety of features using augmented reality technology, Snapchat lenses like Valentine’s Day Lenses, “Hidden Black Stories” Local Lens, and Lunar New Year Lens were some of the popular AR-enabled features in Q1 2022.

Advertising Technology:

The development of advertising products and technology to keep users engaged on the platform and advertisers interested in buying the ad space. Since the advertisement is the major source of revenue for Snap, the development of strong scalable solutions for advertisers requires both financial and technological investment.

Large-scale Infrastructure:

Snap’s user engagement has led to a continuous increase in the number of daily active users on the platform. To cater to the rising number of users, Snap spends a considerable amount of resources and investment on the development of the underlying architecture that powers the social media platform, such as optimizing the delivery of billions of videos to hundreds of millions of people around the world every day.

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