Meta Platforms just delivered one of its strongest quarters ever, reporting $56.31 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, a 33% jump year-over-year that comfortably cleared the $55.45 billion Wall Street consensus. Earnings per share landed at $10.44. And yet, the stock dropped as much as 10% in after-hours trading.
The culprit: Meta told investors it now plans to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion on capital expenditure this year, up from its previous guidance of $115 billion to $135 billion. That’s roughly double the approximately $72 billion the company spent in 2025. The reason? Something the company is calling Meta Superintelligence Labs.
The superintelligence bet
CEO Mark Zuckerberg described 2026 as a pivotal year for building what he calls “personal superintelligence” technologies. The idea is to embed deeply capable AI systems across Meta’s product suite, from Instagram and WhatsApp to its mixed reality platforms, creating experiences that adapt to individual users in ways current AI cannot.
The raised capex ceiling of $145 billion is part of an even larger picture. The so-called Magnificent 7 tech giants are collectively projected to spend somewhere between $600 billion and $670 billion on hyperscaler AI infrastructure in 2026. Meta is now one of the biggest contributors to that total.
