Menlo Park, California, April 29, 2026, 13:46 PDT
Meta Platforms bumped up its 2026 capital spending estimate to a hefty $125 billion to $145 billion on Wednesday. Shares slipped in after-hours trading, despite the Facebook parent topping analysts’ revenue forecasts. Capital spending covers outlays on things like data centers, servers, and other infrastructure built to last.
This shift is important right now: investor focus has swung from Meta’s still-growing ads business to the scale of cash CEO Mark Zuckerberg will pour into artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, CFO Susan Li cited “higher component pricing” and rising data-center expenses as the main reasons behind Meta’s increased spending forecast. Bloomberg
Meta posted first-quarter revenue of $56.31 billion, a jump of 33% compared with the same period last year. Diluted EPS landed at $10.44. Net income surged 61% to $26.77 billion, with an $8.03 billion income-tax benefit giving results a significant boost. Strip that out, and EPS would have come in $3.13 lower, according to Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the quarter as showing “strong momentum across our apps,” adding that the company remains on course to bring “personal superintelligence” to billions. ([Meta Investor][3])
The ad engine kept humming. Meta reported a 19% increase in ad impressions across its suite of apps from a year ago, and the average price per ad moved up 12%. Daily active users for its family of apps—people logging into at least one Meta platform each day—hit 3.56 billion in March, a 4% climb over last year. ([Meta Investor][3])
What caught traders’ attention was the revised spending range. Meta previously guided to $115 billion to $135 billion; now both the lower and upper ends jump by $10 billion. That extra cash is going straight into servers and data centers—the backbone for training and powering its AI push.
The company put out a second-quarter revenue outlook between $58 billion and $61 billion—right in line with what analysts were looking for, according to Reuters. First-quarter revenue landed above the LSEG analyst consensus of $55.45 billion. Still, the stock dropped roughly 5% after hours following the release.
Competition factors heavily into the story. Meta is leveraging AI not just to automate, but to fine-tune its ad campaigns, while Instagram Reels squares off against TikTok and YouTube Shorts in the race for short-form video dominance. According to Reuters, which referenced Emarketer, Meta is set to surpass Alphabet as the world’s top online advertiser based on global net ad revenue this year—traffic acquisition costs excluded.
There’s a camp of analysts saying the spending looks justified—as long as ad revenue keeps picking up speed. Before the report, Wedbush’s Dan Ives called Meta one of Big Tech’s standout AI monetization plays, arguing that AI-fueled ad growth is easing investor worries around all that capital spending.
Meta’s AI push is piling up costs, and investors still don’t have a clear sense of when—or if—they’ll get a payoff. The company flagged a slate of legal and regulatory challenges in both the European Union and the U.S., with youth-focused scrutiny and upcoming trials this year that it says could “significantly impact” business and financials. ([Meta Investor][3])
Meta’s pitch to Wall Street hasn’t changed: enjoy robust ad sales now, brace for bigger AI costs later. This quarter shows the ads are delivering. The AI ramp-up? Still just a promise.
[3]: https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-First-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx “
Meta – Meta Reports First Quarter 2026 Results
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