The AI spend goes on for Meta as CapEx estimates soar for 2026

I don’t have many good things to say about Mark Zuckerberg, but I must give the Meta CEO credit for his steadfast refusal to buckle to Wall Street short termism when it comes to essential AI infrastructure spend.

The firm is now looking at annual capital expenditure of between $115 billion and $135 billion, compared with $72.22 billion a year earlier. The majority of expense growth will be driven by infrastructure costs, including third-party cloud spend and higher infrastructure operating expenses.

CFO Susan Li explained the steep rise:

We have significant opportunities to improve our core business in 2026. We plan to continue to prioritize investing in the business to support these opportunities while also positioning us for an entirely new and exciting product cycle over the coming years, powered by our AI models.

Procuring sufficient infrastructure capacity is central to these initiatives, and we're working to ...