Meta raised its 2026 AI capital expenditure floor to $130B after reporting $60.8B in Q2 revenue, up 28% year over year. The company also disclosed $279B in future data center lease agreements tied to AI infrastructure, a 53% jump from the prior quarter’s roughly $183B.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the earnings call to predict that billions of people will have personal AI agents within five years. “You’ll have billions of people with a personal agent that understands your goals and works on your behalf 24/7,” he said, citing applications in finance, health, relationships, and household management. He positioned WhatsApp and Meta’s other messaging surfaces as the natural interface for multi-agent interactions.
Operating costs surged 55% to $42B, including $2.4B in legal charges and $1.18B in severance tied to the May layoff of roughly 8,000 staff. Reality Labs lost $4.62B in the quarter. Meta now guides full-year capex at $130B to $145B, up from the previous $125B to $145B range.
The $279B lease figure does not yet sit on Meta’s balance sheet. Combined with Microsoft’s additions, the two hyperscalers piled on more than $120B in fresh AI lease obligations in a single quarter, according to Bloomberg. Meta also announced a joint venture with BlackRock to build a $14B, 1 GW data center campus in El Paso, expected online in 2028.
Zuckerberg called AI “accelerating our core business today and opening the door to entirely new enterprise opportunities.”
