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3 months ago
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Whether it’s poaching top talent away from competitors, acquiring AI startups or proclaiming that it will build data centers the size of Manhattan, Meta has been on a spending spree to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities for months now.
The massive splurge is paying off, according to Meta’s chief executive. In a new memo posted on Wednesday ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report, Mark Zuckerberg, describes his ambitions for developing what he calls “superintelligence”.
“Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves,” Zuckerberg wrote. “The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight.”
Wall Street investors are happy with the expensive course Zuckerberg is charting. After the company reported better-than-expected financial results for yet another quarter, its stock soared by double digits.
Though Zuckerberg did not provide any details of what would qualify as “superintelligence” versus standard artificial intelligence, he did say that it would pose “novel safety concerns”.
“We’ll need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg wrote that the company differs from other AI firms in that Meta aims to bring “personal superintelligence to everyone”. Other companies are focused on primarily using “superintelligence” for productivity and to automate “all valuable work”, he wrote.
“The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take, and whether superintelligence will be a tool for personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society,” he wrote.
Investors want to know: does AI mean cashflow?
Investors are looking for signs that the parent company of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook is spending its billions efficiently. The social media company reported its second quarter earnings on Wednesday after the close of the New York stock exchange and beat investor expectations yet again sending stocks soaring 10%. Analysts expect Meta will have to answer questions about whether the revenue the company is bringing in will help offset the hundreds of billions the firm is spending on recruiting and infrastructure, collectively known as capital expenditure.
“AI-driven investments into Meta’s advertising business continue to pay off, bolstering its revenue as the company pours billions of dollars into AI ambitions like superintelligence,” said Minda Smiley, a senior analyst at Emarketer. “But Meta’s exorbitant spending on its AI visions will continue to draw questions and scrutiny from investors who are eager to see returns.”
Meta reported $7.14 in earnings per share (EPS) on $47.52bn in revenue, surpassing Wall Street expectations of $5.92 in earnings per share on $44.8bn in revenue. This quarter is the latest in the company’s multiple-quarter streak of exceeding Wall Street’s financial expectations despite enormous spending on AI.
The company also said it expects to bring in $47.5bn to 50.5bn in revenue in the third quarter of 2025.
Zuckerberg provided few tangible updates in the memo, but one thing is clear: getting to this so-called higher level of intelligence will require a great deal of capital. Meta reported that the total costs and expenditures for the second quarter of 2025 came in at $27.07bn – up 12% year over year. Capital expenditures for the quarter were $17.01bn.
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The company also provided updated guidance on how much the firm expects to spend in the next few months. Meta said it expected to spend between $114bn and $118bn in total expenses in 2025 – a slight adjustment from its previous projection of between $113bn and $118bn. Of that, Meta said it expected its capital expenditures to amount to somewhere in the range of $66bn and $72bn. The company previously predicted it would spend between $64bn and $72bn which was increased from an even earlier prediction of $60bn to $65bn.
Meta is still in the process of planning for 2026, but said that it expected total expenses in the next year to increase beyond 2025 spending.
“The largest single driver of growth will be infrastructure costs, driven by a sharp acceleration in depreciation expense growth and higher operating costs as we continue to scale up our infrastructure fleet,” the company said in a press release. “Aside from infrastructure, we expect the second largest driver of growth to be employee compensation as we add technical talent in priority areas and recognize a full year of compensation expenses for employees hired throughout 2025.”
The company has been building out its new superintelligence labs team with talent from competing AI firms. Meta first invested $14.3bn into Scale AI in exchange for a 49% stake in the company, and brought the startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, on as chief AI officer. Since then, several reports indicate Meta is attracting engineers and other employees away from firms like Apple, Github and several startups with huge compensation packages – including at least one that came in over $200m, according to Bloomberg.
“To win the superintelligence race requires the best of the best talent and Meta has been on a roll when it comes to recruiting top AI talent,” said Forrester’s research director, Mike Proulx. “Money talks and Meta has plenty of it – reaching into the company’s deep pockets to lure luminaries from its competition with lavish compensation packages, while spending hundreds of billions on datacenters to power and scale its AI initiatives.”
Analysts will be scrutinizing how the company’s primary revenue source – advertising – is faring. Meta brought in $46.6bn in advertising revenue in the second quarter, up from $38.3bn for the same quarter in 2024. In addition to looking at overall revenue brought in from advertising analysts will probably be interested in updates on newer advertising efforts such as on WhatsApp.
“For more than a decade, Meta resisted trying to monetize the user base on the communications app,” Motley Fool’s Meier wrote. “But that changed in June when the company announced it would be selling ads, and we are curious to hear about the progress Meta is making.”
