MENLO PARK, California, April 30, 2026, 03:04 PDT
Meta Platforms tumbled over 6% after hours, with investors reacting to a fresh capital expenditure outlook for 2026 — $125 billion to $145 billion. That’s well above what the Street had penciled in, as Meta doubles down on AI infrastructure: we’re talking data centers, servers, chips.
Wall Street’s focus has zeroed in on whether Big Tech’s hefty AI investments will actually deliver revenue fast enough. Investors have been tracking Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, anxious to see if the surge in data-center spending means real cash returns—or just ballooning budgets.
Meta posted a 33% jump in first-quarter revenue to $56.31 billion, with net income up 61% to $26.77 billion. Diluted EPS hit $10.44, boosted by a sizable $8.03 billion tax benefit. Operating margin held steady at 41%, as costs and expenses climbed 35% to $33.44 billion.
Advertising continued to drive Meta’s quarter. The company reported a 19% year-over-year jump in ad impressions across its suite of apps, and the average price per ad climbed 12%. In March, family daily active people—a figure tracking users who access any Meta app at least once a day—hit 3.56 billion, up 4% from last year. That number dipped slightly from December, with Meta pointing to internet issues in Iran and WhatsApp limits in Russia.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, dubbed it a “milestone quarter” as he highlighted Meta Superintelligence Labs’ debut model rollout. Zuckerberg said the company remains “on track” to bring what it describes as personal superintelligence to billions. Meta Investor
Chief Financial Officer Susan Li didn’t mince words with investors. Meta has, in her words, “continued to underestimate our compute needs”—that’s the processing muscle for AI, if you’re keeping score. Essentially, the company is aiming for agility: ramp up capacity when demand calls for it, dial it back if things cool off. The Motley Fool
Staffing decisions are already feeling the squeeze. Li noted Meta’s expected savings from headcount cuts will get eaten up by one-time restructuring charges related to those layoffs this year, so the projected 2026 expenses remain steady. Meta reported a headcount of 77,986 at the end of March.
Meta isn’t the only one opening its wallet. Alphabet bumped its 2026 capex target up to $180 billion-$190 billion after reporting a 63% gain in Google Cloud revenue. Amazon stuck to its $200 billion AI investment goal as AWS revenue climbed 28%. The updates drew mixed reactions: Alphabet and Amazon’s faster cloud growth helped sharpen their immediate AI revenue pitch to investors.
That gap is where Meta runs into trouble. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mandeep Singh pointed out the extra spending “increases the stakes,” noting that Meta relies on its own AI system—one he says “still trails frontier lab peers.” The Business Times
Capex isn’t the only worry here. Meta flagged ongoing legal and regulatory threats in both the EU and U.S.—specifically, youth-focused probes and several U.S. court cases slated for this year that could result in a sizable loss. There’s another concern, too: if user growth or engagement stalls for long, the rationale for its heavy AI investments starts to look shaky.
Meta kept its annual expense outlook steady at $162 billion to $169 billion and sees second-quarter revenue landing between $58 billion and $61 billion. Investors aren’t debating Zuckerberg’s sprawling AI vision right now; the immediate focus is how quickly that $145 billion investment cap turns into usable products, ad conversions, and real returns that back up the spending.
