Meta incurs Wall Street's short termist wrath as CapEx soars and cash flow crashes 91% to fund AI expansion, but Zuckerberg holds the line
Wall Street had been bracing itself for more defiance from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his continued determination to invest heavily in AI infrastructure, but few could have imagined that what they would be presented with was a 91% drop in cash flow to fund this spending.
In Q2, the firm reported free cash flow of $784 million, down from $8.55 billion a year ago as CapEx soared to $31.08 billion, with more to come - the company now expects total 2026 spend to be as high as $169 billion, up from a range of $115 billion to $135 billion set out at the start of the year.
Zuckerberg remained defiant about the need for such levels of spending:
In terms of the different opportunities and how we think about the compute, overall, a substantial amount of the compute goes towards training models to be a leading lab. And I...
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