Mark Zuckerberg says 2026 will be a ‘big year’ for personal superintelligence as Meta boosts capex

Facebook parent Meta delivered “strong business performance” in 2025, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during Q4 2025 earnings call on Wednesday. Revenue surged on the back of AI-driven enhancements, and the company committed to significant capital investment in 2026 to support its Superintelligence Labs efforts.

“This is going to be a big year for delivering personal superintelligence, accelerating our business, building infrastructure for the future, and shaping how our company will work going forward,” the Meta chief said, after making similar remarks in 2025.

The California-based firm’s Q4 revenue reached $59.9 billion, up 23.8% from the same period last year, while net profit surged 9.3% year-on-year to $22.8 billion. 

For the full fiscal year, the social media giant reported a total revenue of $200.9 billion, a 22.2% annual growth. However, its net profit for FY25 fell 3% to $60.4 billion compared to the previous year, amidst heavy capital expenditures.

The Instagram owner spent $72.22 billion on capital expenditure in 2025, and expects this to rise to between $115 billion and $135 billion in 2026, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said, driven by increased investment in Superintelligence Labs and its core business, implying a rise of at least 60%.

Meta’s peers Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have also sharply increased capital spending to expand server and data centre capacity amid surging AI growth and rising computing demand, even as concerns about a potential AI bubble persist.

Meanwhile, the social media firm expects total revenue for the first quarter of 2026 to range between $53.5 billion to $56.5 billion, up from $42.3 billion in Q1 2025. Based on the midpoint of $55 billion, this would mean a YoY growth of 30%.

Its revenue forecast for the next quarter, along with AI-related developments, strengthened investor confidence, sending the tech firm’s shares up by about 10% in after-hours trading.

Major AI acceleration

“We are now seeing a major AI acceleration. I expect 2026 to be a year where this wave accelerates even further on several fronts,” Zuckerberg remarked. He added Meta will begin rolling out new models and products in the coming months, aiming to demonstrate rapid progress and steadily push the technology frontier over the year.

Zuckerberg explained Meta is working on “merging LLMs with recommendation systems” across its apps and ads, calling current systems “primitive” and aiming to personalise feeds around users’ “unique personal goals”. 

He said AI will enable “more immersive and interactive” media, transforming apps from content recommendation algorithms into experiences where “an AI that understands you” can surface or generate highly personalised content. This is part of the company’s vision of building personal superintelligence.

The Meta chief believes that “glasses” are the ultimate incarnation of this vision, so the company is directing most of its Reality Labs investment towards glasses and wearables going forward.

Zuckerberg said the firm will continue to invest heavily in infrastructure to train leading models and deliver “personal superintelligence”, positioning efficiency through its recently announced Meta Compute initiative as a strategic advantage.

Ads business

The social media company saw a 24.3% YoY growth in its advertising revenue, its main source of income, which increased to $58.1 billion in Q4 FY25. Revenue from the company’s family of apps reached $58.9 billion, which includes advertising revenue.

Meta’s family of apps—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Messenger—recorded a 7% year-on-year rise in daily active users, averaging 3.58 billion in December 2025. Ad impressions grew 12% over the year, and the average price per ad climbed 9%.

Meanwhile, Reality Labs, the division behind Meta’s virtual and augmented reality devices and metaverse initiatives, reported $955 million in Q4 revenue, down 11.8% YoY, due to the company lapping the launch of Quest 3 in 2024, as well as retail partners’ procurement of Quest headsets during the year. The unit posted an operating loss of $6 billion.

Zuckerberg expects Reality Labs losses in 2026 to be similar to last year. “This will likely be the peak as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward while continuing to execute on our vision,” he added.

Exciting roadmap

According to Li, the company expects full-year 2026 expenses to range between $162 billion and $169 billion.

The CFO explained that the majority of expense growth will be driven by infrastructure costs, which include third-party cloud spend, higher depreciation, and higher infrastructure operating expenses. 

Li added that the second largest contributor to total expense growth is compensation driven by investments in technical talent, including 2026 hires to support Meta’s priority areas, particularly AI, as well as a full year of expenses from 2025 hires.

Meta’s headcount was 78,865 as of December 31, 2025, an increase of 6% YoY, driven by hiring in priority areas of infrastructure and Superintelligence.

“The investments we have made to improve our business are continuing to drive strong growth, and we have an exciting roadmap this year to deliver new experiences and services for our global community,” Li remarked.