🚀 Meta Stock Soars as Blowout Earnings Meet a $135B AI Spending Shock — Wall Street Cheers, Questions Linger

Meta just reminded Wall Street why it remains one of the most closely watched — and most controversial — companies in tech.

Shares of Meta Platforms (META) surged early Thursday after the company crushed fourth-quarter earnings expectations and unveiled an eye-popping 2026 capital spending plan that underscores just how aggressively it intends to compete in the global AI arms race.

The result: a stock that jumped as much as 10% in after-hours trading Wednesday and remained nearly 8% higher in premarket trading Thursday morning.

Meta delivered a clear win for investors in Q4.

The beat on both the top and bottom lines reinforced the strength of Meta’s advertising engine — still the company’s primary cash machine — even as it pours unprecedented resources into artificial intelligence.

The biggest headline, however, came from Meta’s forward-looking guidance.

The company announced it expects 2026 capital expenditures to land between $115 billion and $135 billion, a massive jump from the $72.22 billion spent in 2025.

That figure puts Meta firmly in the same spending league as its biggest rivals. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all racing to build vast AI data-center networks, and Meta is making it clear it won’t be outgunned.

Wall Street appears impressed — at least for now.

Not every part of Meta’s empire is firing on all cylinders.

The company’s Reality Labs division — home to its metaverse ambitions — generated $955 million in revenue, slightly below the $959 million analysts expected. More importantly, the unit posted an operating loss of $6 billion, worse than the $5.9 billion loss Wall Street had penciled in.

Meta has already begun trimming costs in the metaverse segment, recently cutting jobs and redirecting some of those savings toward wearables, including its expanding lineup of AI-powered smart glasses.

Meta’s AI push hasn’t come cheap — or smoothly.

The company spent $14.3 billion to acquire 49% of Scale AI and bring in its CEO, Alexandr Wang, who now serves as Meta’s chief AI officer and leads its Superintelligence Labs.

But execution challenges are mounting. Meta’s highly anticipated Llama 4 Behemoth model has faced significant delays, raising questions about the company’s pace compared to rivals.

According to CNBC, Meta is now considering a major philosophical shift: making its next flagship AI model proprietary, moving away from its open-weights approach that allowed developers to freely build on and improve its models.

Such a move would mark a sharp departure from Meta’s long-standing open strategy — and a tacit acknowledgment that the competitive landscape has changed.

Despite starting 2025 as an AI frontrunner, Meta now appears to be playing catch-up.

Google, powered by its Gemini 3 model, is widely viewed as having taken the lead — outpacing even OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Against that backdrop, Meta’s massive spending spree has fueled speculation that the company is scrambling to regain momentum.

Beyond AI, Meta faces intensifying regulatory headwinds.

Each of these developments adds another layer of uncertainty to Meta’s long-term outlook.

For the moment, Wall Street is applauding Meta’s earnings power and its willingness to spend big to stay relevant in AI.

But beneath the rally lies a more complicated story:
a company flush with cash, racing to keep up in a brutally competitive AI landscape, while juggling regulatory battles and lingering doubts about past moonshots.

Meta’s Q4 results lit a fire under the stock — but whether its $135 billion AI gamble pays off may define the company’s next decade.