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Ultimate parent Meta Platforms, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware and run from California. The EU operating entity — Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (Dublin) — is the GDPR data controller and the DSA legal point of contact, so EU law does reach the service and is enforced. But the Irish company is a subsidiary, not the controlling entity; jurisdiction over the product, its terms and its parent sits in the US. This is classic EU-operating-under-a-foreign-parent territory.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg controls roughly 61% of total voting power through super-voting Class B shares (10 votes each) while holding only ~13.7% of the economics. Class A is listed on Nasdaq. Voting control, economic majority and listing venue are all US. There is no EU ownership angle whatsoever.

Meta owns and operates its own data centers rather than renting hyperscaler capacity, and it runs major EU facilities — notably the Clonee campus in Ireland — which support EU services. That self-owned EU footprint is better than US-cloud renters. But the infrastructure is owned by a US company subject to the CLOUD Act, and the DPC found Meta was unlawfully transferring EEA personal data to the US (€1.2bn fine, suspension order). Data residency in the EU is partial and the foreign-law exposure is concrete, not theoretical.

Global HQ, executive leadership and product decision-making are in Menlo Park, California; the company reports in US dollars and answers to the SEC. There is a substantial and real EU operational presence (Dublin is Meta's international HQ, large Irish workforce, ~259M EU monthly users), which lifts this above the floor — but the center of gravity for people and decisions is unambiguously American.