Meta Set Its AI Budget to as Much as $145 Billion. Investors Aren't Sure They Like It.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) now plans to spend $125 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026 -- a range the company raised by $10 billion at both ends in April, mostly for AI (artificial intelligence) infrastructure. The market has answered with skepticism. The stock trades about 24% below its 52-week high of $796.25, and it fell another 3.4% on Thursday -- a rough day across big tech.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn't backing off. On the company's first-quarter earnings call, he said Meta is rolling out more than a gigawatt of custom chips it designed with Broadcom, part of an effort to get more out of every AI dollar it spends. And the message on the budget itself was unambiguous.

"Compute is becoming increasingly important as it determines the quality of the services we can provide, including powering more capable models and delivering innovative new products," said chief financial officer Susan Li on the call. In addition, Li explained that its employees are increasingly relying on compute to "generate new ideas, run experiments, execute tasks, and build products."

Image source: Getty Images.

The bill is already large. Meta's capital expenditures were $19.8 billion in the first quarter alone. Even so, the company still produced $12.4 billion of free cash flow in the period, and its full-year expense outlook of $162 billion to $169 billion was left unchanged.

That's the tension heading into the company's second-quarter report on Wednesday, July 29. Alphabet raised its own 2026 spending forecast this week and watched its stock fall in response. If Meta lifts its range again, the reaction could be rough.

But the growth side of the ledger deserves equal weight. Meta's revenue rose 22% in 2025 to about $201 billion, and the stock now trades at about 22 times earnings, a modest multiple for growth like that. A business compounding at that pace can absorb a lot of spending fear.

On July 29, watch three things: the pace of revenue growth, any further move in the capital spending range, and evidence that the AI investment is showing up in advertising results rather than just the cost lines. So far, the growth has kept arriving alongside the spending. That's the pattern that has to hold.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Broadcom, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.