Meta raises AI data center capex to $130B-$145B

Meta has raised its capital expenditure plans for the year to $130bn to $145bn as AI data center costs climb, marking the company’s latest increase in spending guidance.

The new range is up from $115bn-$135bn at the start of this year and from $125bn-$145bn in April. The move comes in the same week that Amazon also lifted its capex guidance by $20bn, citing the cost of memory for AI servers.

Investors reacted differently to the two companies’ spending increases. While Amazon’s shares jumped after its update, Meta’s shares fell around ten percent.

The market reaction came as Meta’s free cash flow for the quarter dropped to $784m, its lowest level in the past five years. In the same period last year, free cash flow was $8.5bn.

On the company’s earnings call, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the scale of the spending. "I get that this is a big investment and it’s a big bet", CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call. "We see the technology working. We’re happy with the trajectory of the lab. I’m excited about the products that are coming. And we believe that this is going to be a big thing."

Meta also reiterated its interest in becoming a cloud provider. Zuckerberg said the company was "getting a lot of offers for compute at a significant premium over what we paid for it."

The company is reported in early talks to rent its compute to Anthropic in a deal that could be worth as much as $10bn. It also recently hired AWS cloud lead David Brown as it prepares for its cloud push.

For the quarter, Meta reported revenues of $61bn, up 28 percent, and profits of $6bn, down 14 percent. The company forecast third-quarter revenue of between $61bn and $64bn, with the midpoint below Wall Street expectations of $63.1bn.

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