NEW YORK, Feb 9, 2026, 05:13 EST
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang singled out Meta Platforms as a standout among tech giants for making money off artificial intelligence, telling CNBC, “nobody uses AI better than Meta.” He pointed to surging demand for AI, describing it as “sky high” with the sector spending heavily on fresh computing infrastructure. 1
Timing’s a factor here. Investors have been hitting big tech stocks for ramping up capital expenditures, despite chipmakers rallying and executives doubling down on claims that the buildout phase is far from over. “The AI build-out trade … got too pricey,” said Andrew Wells, chief investment officer at SanJac Alpha, in comments to Reuters. 2
Meta is dialing up its spending. The company’s 2026 capital expenditures outlook lands between $115 billion and $135 billion, targeting data centres and other big-ticket infrastructure. Fourth-quarter ad revenue jumped 24% to $58.14 billion, according to Reuters. 3
Meta reported fourth-quarter revenue up 24% year-on-year, reaching $59.9 billion. Earnings per share jumped to $8.88. CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed to “strong business performance in 2025.” In December, daily active people across Meta’s suite of apps averaged 3.58 billion, according to the company. 4
Meta, in another update on its AI initiatives, reported that its video generation tools have hit a $10 billion revenue run-rate for the quarter—a figure extrapolated from the latest numbers. The company also highlighted an “incremental attribution” feature, designed to measure ad impact. According to Meta, rolling out the latest version of this model pushed incremental conversions up by 24%. The tool now commands a multi-billion-dollar annual run-rate. 5
During its earnings call, Meta pointed to upgrades in its ad ranking models as the driver behind a 3.5% uptick in Facebook ad clicks, and a little over 1% rise in Instagram conversions for the fourth quarter. The company tied these gains to the adoption of more efficient “sequence learning” systems, which analyze longer patterns in user behavior. 6
Over the weekend, a 24/7 Wall St. column cast Huang’s take as a useful marker for investors puzzling over where AI “spend” ends and the “payoff” begins. The piece highlighted Meta’s shift away from older CPU-based recommendation engines, spotlighting its adoption of so-called “agentic” generative AI — the kind built to plan and act — now powering everything from recommendations to advertising and content tools. 7
The Motley Fool, in a separate note, pointed to the size of Meta’s AI budget—and warned that profitability is getting squeezed as spending climbs. The firm also called out Meta’s $14 billion move for a 49% stake in Scale AI, a deal that brought founder Alexandr Wang into Meta’s sphere and was reported by Reuters last year. 8
A recent Nasdaq.com investor column raised the possibility that Meta could break into the $4 trillion club by 2032, projecting it would need to hit roughly 14% compound annual growth to pull it off. As of Feb. 7, CompaniesMarketCap put Meta’s value at about $1.67 trillion. Nvidia hit $4 trillion in July 2025, and Alphabet followed in January 2026, according to Reuters. 9
Still, there’s the cost side. Meta’s operating margin has dropped to 41%, down from 48% the year before. The company flagged that mounting legal and regulatory challenges in both the EU and U.S. could “significantly impact” its performance, and spending is climbing sharply. If ad budgets tighten in a slump, expect the debate around AI payoffs to intensify. 10
The conversation isn’t stopping at Meta. According to the Financial Times, top tech companies are gearing up to pour around $660 billion into AI by 2026—a sum large enough to shake up markets by itself. 11
