Meta is pouring cash into the bodily and technical infrastructure wanted to scale its AI ambitions. The corporate mentioned Wednesday in its second-quarter earnings report that it plans to greater than double its spend on constructing AI infrastructure, like information facilities and servers.
“We at the moment count on 2025 capital expenditures, together with principal funds on finance leases, to be within the vary of $66-72 billion…up roughly $30 billion year-over-year on the midpoint,” Meta mentioned.
That’s an aggressive capex progress, and one which Meta plans to proceed onwards to 2026. The corporate mentioned it expects a equally giant improve in spend on AI infrastructure subsequent yr as the corporate continues to “aggressively [pursue] alternatives to deliver further capability on-line to satisfy the wants of [its] synthetic intelligence efforts and enterprise operations.”
“We count on that creating main AI infrastructure shall be a core benefit in creating the most effective AI fashions and product experiences, so we count on to ramp our investments considerably in 2026 to assist that work,” mentioned Susan Li, Meta CFO, throughout the firm’s Wednesday earnings name.
Li additionally famous that whereas Meta expects to finance most of its AI spend by itself, the corporate is exploring methods to work with monetary companions to co-develop information facilities.
“We don’t have any finalized transactions to announce, however we typically imagine that there shall be fashions right here that may appeal to vital exterior financing to assist large-scale information middle initiatives which might be developed utilizing our capacity to construct world-class infrastructure, whereas offering us with flexibility ought to our infrastructure necessities change over time,” Li mentioned.
Meta has introduced two main AI “titan clusters.” The primary is Prometheus in Ohio, which is poised to be among the many first AI superclusters to hit 1 gigawatt of compute energy when it comes on-line in 2026. Then there’s Hyperion, a cluster in Louisiana that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has bragged would have a footprint the dimensions of Manhattan and will scale as much as 5 gigawatts over a number of years. On prime of these, Meta has a number of different unnamed titan-scale clusters underway.
Meta’s information middle initiatives promise to take in sufficient power to energy thousands and thousands of properties, pulling that electrical energy from close by communities. One of many firm’s initiatives in Newton County, Georgia, has already induced the water faucets to run dry in some residents’ properties.
Meta additionally famous in its earnings report that it expects its second-largest driver of progress to be worker compensation as the corporate spends thousands and thousands, and probably even billions, to poach proficient AI engineers and researchers to work for Meta’s newly shaped enterprise unit, Superintelligence Labs.
Earlier than earnings, Zuckerberg shared his imaginative and prescient for “private superintelligence,” the concept AI ought to assist particular person individuals stay their greatest lives, primarily by way of the medium of Meta’s good glasses and digital actuality headsets.
Meta’s inventory surged 10% in after-hours as buyers responded to Meta’s total efficiency within the quarter and better-than-expected outlook for the third quarter. Meta reported income of $47.5 billion within the second quarter, with expectations to hit between $47.5 billion and $50.5 billion in Q3. Promoting drove Meta’s income beneficial properties, fueled by AI instruments — like AI-powered translations and video era — to assist advertisers create extra significant and focused campaigns.
The corporate’s Actuality Labs section, nonetheless, noticed a $4.5 billion loss.
This text was up to date to replicate Meta’s further paths to funding its AI infrastructure builds.
