Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Platforms Inc. CEO during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, September 17, 2025 in Menlo Park, California, USA.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to increase his company’s spending on artificial intelligence in 2026. Wall Street seems to be on board with this plan.
In it fourth quarter earnings report On Wednesday, Meta beat the top and bottom lines, and also indicated that its AI-related capital spending will be between $115 billion and $135 billion this year. That’s almost double the amount Meta spent on capital last year Updated the AI device.
Although investors have already expressed concern Meta’s spending spree on AIthey took solace in the company’s latest results, which showed a 24% year-over-year increase in online advertising revenue. Meta stocks, which have trailed the market for the past year, rose as much as 10% in after-hours trading.
“As we plan for the future, we will continue to invest significantly in infrastructure to train leading models and deliver personalized super intelligence to billions of people and businesses around the world,” Zuckerberg told analysts during an earnings call.
Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s ambitions here data center construction for approval of current and future AI projects.
Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Lee, told analysts that the company is “capacity constrained” and needs more computing power to further improve its core advertising business, as well as provide its AI team with the resources it needs to create more advanced models and products.
“Our teams have done a great job scaling our infrastructure through 2025, but the demand for computing resources across the company has grown faster than our supply,” Lee said.
Zuckerberg said 2026 will be a big year for AI, with Meta’s investments aimed at supporting its “build” mission. personal super intelligence.
Whether or not Meta will gain more from new AI products that generate revenue remains a major question, and one Zuckerberg hasn’t given a clear answer to.
“I mean, we launch new products all year long,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “I think the most important thing is that we’re not just launching one thing, and we’re building a lot.”
Perhaps Zuckerberg’s biggest departure of the past year 14.3 billion dollars investment At Scale AI, which brought founder and CEO Alexander Wang and some of its top engineers and researchers to Meta. Wang currently heads Meta’s TBD AI division, which is testing a new frontier model under the code name Meta. Avocado it intends to be the successor of the company Llama model familyThis was reported by CNBC.
“I hope our early models do well, but more importantly, show the rapid trajectory we’re on,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday. “Then I expect we’ll continue to push the boundaries steadily throughout the year as we continue to launch new models.”
Asked on the call why Meta needed to create its own powerful AI founding model, Zuckerberg said it was important because Meta is a “deep technology company.”
Meta doesn’t risk being “limited to what others in the ecosystem are building or allowing us to build,” he said, allowing model management to help “shape the future of these products.”
For now, online advertising still accounts for the vast majority of Meta’s revenue. As long as the business continues to dominate mobile, beating expectations and throwing in billions of dollars in cash per quarter, Zuckerberg may have plenty of room to realize his AI ambitions.
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