NEW YORK, Jan 30, 2026, 09:39 ET — Regular session
- Meta shares jumped following the company’s latest earnings report and updated outlook
- Management projects a larger AI infrastructure spend for 2026
- Traders are zeroing in on whether ad revenue will sustain the buildout without cutting into returns
Shares of Meta Platforms climbed 10.4% to $738.31 in early New York trade on Friday, building on a post-earnings rally as investors digested the company’s latest AI investment strategy.
The timing is sensitive for Big Tech spending. Microsoft’s earnings this week weighed on software stocks, raising doubts about whether the heavy AI investments are driving growth quickly enough.
Meta’s report laid out a straightforward play: its ad business keeps expanding, and management is ready to invest more aggressively. The story isn’t new, but the scale of the figures is pushing the market to separate winners from losers once more.
Meta reported a 24% jump in fourth-quarter revenue, hitting $59.89 billion, with ad revenue climbing to $58.14 billion. The company projects first-quarter revenue between $53.5 billion and $56.5 billion. Looking ahead to 2026, Meta expects capital expenditures—spending on assets like data centers and servers—to range from $115 billion to $135 billion, while total expenses are forecasted at $162 billion to $169 billion.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described 2026 as “a big year for delivering personal superintelligence,” the company’s term for highly personalized AI. Meta has secured capacity deals with third-party providers like Alphabet’s Google, CoreWeave, and Nebius. John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, noted that “the returns are enormous today” in Meta’s core business. Reuters
Meta’s CFO Susan Li said the company remains “capacity constrained” when it comes to compute. She told analysts that while Meta expects to boost capacity with added cloud resources, it will “likely still be constrained through much of 2026” until new capacity from its own data centers comes online later this year. s21.q4cdn.com
Analysts scrambled to revise their forecasts. Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak and team cited Meta’s gains in engagement and monetization, boosting their price target to $825 from $750. Jefferies took it further, hiking its target by $90 to $1,000, according to Investopedia.
Meta flagged a downside risk to its spending surge. The company is in sync with the European Commission over tweaks to its Less Personalized Ads product and flagged legal and regulatory challenges ahead in both the EU and U.S. It also noted that trials set for this year could lead to a significant loss.
The next critical dates are approaching fast. Alphabet reports earnings on Feb. 4, followed by Amazon on Feb. 5, with investors eager for signs on whether steep AI spending is still justifiable. Then comes the U.S. jobs report on Feb. 6, which could shake up rate hike expectations.
