New York, Feb 12, 2026, 10:11 ET — Regular session
- Meta slipped roughly 1% during morning trading.
- This week, the company broke ground on a $10 billion data center project in Indiana, with plans for 1 gigawatt of capacity.
- Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman has revealed a Meta stake of about $2 billion.
Meta Platforms slipped almost 1% early Thursday, changing hands at $662.15. The stock’s weakness came as investors kept a close eye on the company’s rising spending for artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Shares slipped just a day after Meta announced a $10 billion data center project in Lebanon, Indiana. The facility is set to deliver 1 gigawatt of capacity—enough to supply electricity to around 800,000 homes—and the company aims to have it up and running by late 2027 or early 2028. “We’re going to be pushing a lot of capacity through construction very quickly at this site,” said Rachel Peterson, Meta’s vice president for data centers. Reuters
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square snapped up a Meta stake late last year, according to a note Ackman sent to clients on Wednesday. The hedge fund put about $2 billion into the stock—roughly 10% of its total capital. “We believe Meta’s current share price underappreciates the company’s long-term upside potential from AI,” the team said in its presentation. Still, they noted that some investors remain nervous about Meta’s heavy AI spending. Reuters
Meta’s annual report laid out just how much it’s spending. Capital expenditures — money earmarked for things like data centers and servers, plus principal payments on finance leases — came in at $72.22 billion for 2025. Looking ahead, the company expects that number to climb, forecasting between $115 billion and $135 billion in 2026 as it backs AI and its main business.
Meta announced Wednesday that its Lebanon campus will see more than $10 billion poured into the project and employ over 4,000 people at peak construction. When operations begin, about 300 jobs will remain. The company added it plans to offset the data center’s entire energy use with clean energy, go for LEED Gold certification, and implement a closed-loop cooling system designed to cut water use most of the year.
As Meta’s plans shift from speculation to construction, local leaders have demanded more details about water use, power needs, and promised community benefits. “A tenet of our data center program from day one has been to play a really strong, positive role in the communities that we’re in,” Peterson told the crowd in Lebanon, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. WFYI Public Media
The timing of Ackman’s move—and Meta’s pullback—has stirred up more chatter. Pershing started building its stake in Meta back in November, paying an average of $625 per share. According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta ended at $669 on Feb. 11, following months of softness driven by worries about the company’s hefty spending on AI.
Meta’s been looking to preempt criticism about its data centers’ power and water consumption. The company says it covers all of its own energy bills and works with utilities long before construction, aiming to make sure locals don’t feel the impact. On top of that, Meta is moving forward with a second Indiana site in Jeffersonville, according to DatacenterDynamics.
Still, the numbers don’t get any easier for certain investors. Spending comes heavy upfront, with the returns up in the air. If ad demand stumbles, or if costs for building, chips, or energy spike, suddenly that capex issue is right back in focus.
Traders now turn to the U.S. Consumer Price Index data for January, set for release Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET on Feb. 13. The number has the potential to rapidly shift rate bets and valuations across megacap tech, including Meta.
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