Meta Platforms is about to walk into its Q2 2026 earnings call on July 29 carrying a question that no amount of impressive ad revenue can fully answer: is spending up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure actually worth it?
The stock has slipped roughly 10% year-to-date, and investors have seen the revenue numbers. What they haven’t seen is a clear, near-term payoff from a capex budget that has essentially doubled in a single year.
The numbers look great, so why the anxiety?
Meta’s top line is humming. The company posted approximately 33% year-on-year revenue growth in Q1 2026, comfortably beating analyst expectations on both revenue and earnings per share.
But after that Q1 earnings call on April 29, shares dropped about 10%. Not because the results were bad, but because Meta simultaneously revealed that its capital expenditure plans were climbing due to rising component costs.
