Meta Platforms disclosed capital expenditure guidance of $38-42 billion for 2026, a 30% increase over 2025 levels of approximately $37 billion. The spending is directed almost entirely at AI infrastructure: GPU clusters for training the next generation of LLaMA language models, data centre construction, and custom silicon development. CEO Mark Zuckerberg called AI "the single most important technology investment of our generation" on the Q4 2025 earnings call.
LLaMA Model Development
Meta's open-source LLaMA model series has become the most widely adopted foundation model outside of OpenAI's GPT family. LLaMA 3.2, released in September 2024, demonstrated performance competitive with GPT-4 on many benchmarks. The company is training LLaMA 4 on a cluster of over 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, with the training run estimated to cost over $500 million in compute alone. Meta has also developed its own custom AI training chip (MTIA) for inference workloads, reducing its dependence on NVIDIA for serving deployed models.
AI Revenue Impact
Meta's total revenue reached $164 billion in 2025, up 22% year-on-year, driven primarily by AI-powered advertising improvements. The company's AI recommendation systems have increased engagement on Instagram Reels by approximately 40% and Facebook Feed by 20%. Advantage+, Meta's AI-powered advertising product, generated over $20 billion in annual revenue, with advertisers reporting 20-30% improvements in return on ad spend compared to traditional targeting.
Meta AI, the company's consumer AI assistant, reached approximately 600 million monthly active users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, making it one of the most widely used AI interfaces globally. However, direct monetisation of the assistant remains nascent.
Reality Labs
The Reality Labs division, which develops Quest VR headsets and AR glasses, reported an operating loss of approximately $17 billion in 2025, bringing cumulative losses since 2020 to over $55 billion. The Quest 3 headset has sold moderately well at its $499 price point, but the division remains far from profitability. Meta's Orion AR glasses prototype, demonstrated in September 2024, is not expected to reach consumers before 2027.
For Meta financial data, visit Meta Investor Relations. For LLaMA model details, see Meta AI.