(Reuters) -Meta recorded a nearly $16 billion one-time charge in the third quarter related to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, and said its capital expenditure next year would be “notably larger” than in 2025.
Shares of the company fell around 6% after the bell.
Excluding the charge, Meta said its third-quarter net income would have increased by $15.93 billion to $18.64 billion, compared to the reported net income of $2.71 billion.
The social media company now expects capital expenditure between $70 billion and $72 billion this year, compared with its prior forecast of $66 billion to $72 billion.
“As we have begun to plan for next year, it has become clear that our compute needs have continued to expand meaningfully … we expect to invest aggressively to meet these needs both by building our own infrastructure and contracting with third party cloud providers,” Meta CFO Susan Li said in a statement.Â
“We anticipate this will provide further upward pressure on our capital expenditures and expense plans next year.”
Employee compensation costs will be the second largest contributor to the increase in costs, Li said, to account for the compensation of employees hired throughout 2025, particularly AI talent.
MASSIVE USER BASE FUELS AD REVENUE
Meta continues to benefit from its massive user base. The company’s powerful AI-optimized ad platform helps marketers automate campaigns, improve the quality of video ads, translate ads and generate persona-based images to target different customer segments.
The company has launched ads on its messaging platform WhatsApp and social network Threads, directly competing with platforms such as Elon Musk’s X, while Instagram’s Reels continue to jostle with ByteDance’s TikTok and YouTube Shorts for ad revenue in the short-video market.Â
Meta has been doubling down on AI, with a target of achieving superintelligence, a theoretical milestone where machines could outthink humans.
To that end, Meta reorganized its AI efforts under the Superintelligence Labs unit in June, following senior staff departures and a poor reception for its Llama 4 model.Â
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally led an aggressive talent hiring spree and has said that the company would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers for superintelligence. The company is among the top buyers of Nvidia’s sought-after AI chips.
The company struck a $27 billion financing deal last week with Blue Owl Capital, Meta’s largest-ever private capital agreement, to fund a massive data center project in Richland Parish, Louisiana, known as “Hyperion.”
In a surprise move, Meta said last week it would cut around 600 jobs out of the several thousand employees within its AI unit to streamline decision-making and increase the responsibility, scope and impact of each role.
The company’s aggressive AI investments are creating significant cost pressures, even as it anticipates long-term benefits and revenue growth.
Major tech companies including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft and CoreWeave are on track to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year, Morgan Stanley estimates.
These investments that come amid economic uncertainty have fueled fears of an AI bubble, putting pressure on CEOs to deliver measurable results, as the push could trigger losses, job cuts and boardroom shake-ups.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Deepa Babington)
