Meta says it plans to spend up to $145 billion in capital expenditure in 2026, a jump of roughly 101% from the $72.2 billion it spent one year earlier.
The company says the money will fund its core business, while higher component prices and additional data center costs are adding to the increase. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI will be a 'significant portion' of that total spend.
On Meta’s Q2 2026 earnings call, Zuckerberg said the company is 'investing aggressively in infrastructure' as AI usage in its products and businesses continues to ramp. He said much of the compute is expected to go toward training models, growing the core business, and delivering personal agents and new products.
Zuckerberg also said Meta sees a 'large enterprise opportunity' that includes APIs, business agents, potentially selling compute directly, and other services for large customers. In a press release, he said AI is 'accelerating our core business today, powering our next generation of products, and opening the door to entirely new enterprise opportunities.'
The $145 billion capex would put Meta above every country’s military budget from 2025 except the United States, China and Russia. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. spent $954 billion on the military in 2025, followed by China at an estimated $336 billion and Russia at an estimated $190 billion.
Meta’s spending has risen quickly as the company shifted its focus toward AI. Its recorded capex was $28.1 billion in 2023, $39.23 billion in 2024 and $72.22 billion in 2025, according to SEC filings. Meta had originally projected 2025 expenditures of up to $65 billion.
The company also said total expenses in 2026 could reach up to $169 billion. Reuters reported that this reflects higher compensation, recruitment of AI talent and infrastructure spending.
Across the AI giants, the spending race is still accelerating. Reuters reported that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are on track to spend about $730 billion on AI in 2026, up from previous estimates of $600 billion.
The numbers come first. Meta is not just building software; it is building a capital-intensive industrial base around AI, with the taxpayer nowhere on the bill but the market still asked to absorb the risk. When a company’s spending climbs into military-budget territory, investors should look closely at whether the returns can match the leverage being deployed.
