Instagram-owner Meta on Wednesday boosted its capital spending plans for the new year by 73% in the pursuit of “superintelligence,” an effort to offer deeply personalized artificial intelligence to its large social media user base.
Meta shares jumped nearly 9% in extended trading. The company also forecast first-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations and beat profit and revenue estimates for its quarter ended December 31.
Meta expects its capital expenditure for 2026 to be between $115 billion and $135 billion, driven largely by infrastructure costs including payments made to third-party cloud providers, higher depreciation of its AI data center assets, and higher infrastructure operating expenses. This compares with expectations of a $109.9 billion capex budget, according to Visible Alpha, and $72.22 billion that Meta spent last year.
“This is going to be a big year for delivering personal superintelligence, accelerating our business infrastructure for the future and shaping how our company will work going forward,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts.
Meta forecast 2026 total expenses to be in the range of $162 billion and $169 billion, up from $117.69 billion a year ago, driven by rising employee compensation as the company spends millions to hire top AI talent.
