As Mark Zuckerberg set out his vision for AI and Meta’s drive for ‘superintelligence’, the Facebook parent company saw revenues up 22pc in quarter two.
As the company beat analysts’ forecasts with a 22pc increase in revenue for the second quarter, Meta yesterday (30 July) signalled that its spending blitz on AI would increase into 2026, as it vies to catch up on the other major players.
Zuckerberg also published a personal letter that sets out his views on ‘superintelligence’.
Shares jumped by more than 10pc, as the markets appeared to like the numbers, and the commitment to continued AI investment. The $47.5bn Q2 revenues were well above Wall Street estimates of around $44.8bn, while profits were up 36pc year-on-year to $18.3bn.
But it is that commitment to continue its AI spending blitz that is appealing to many of the analysts, as Meta said the rate of increase in spending would rise next year, given the need to build data centres to power the AI drive and ongoing recruitment of the best AI talent.
In its CFO commentary, Meta said Q3 revenues were forecast in the $47.5bn to $50.5bn range.
“While we are not providing an outlook for fourth quarter revenue, we would expect our year-over-year growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2025 to be slower than the third quarter as we lap a period of stronger growth in the fourth quarter of 2024,” said CFO Susan Li in her commentary.
“The largest single driver of growth will be infrastructure costs, driven by a sharp acceleration in depreciation expense growth and higher operating costs as we continue to scale up our infrastructure fleet,” said Li.
“Aside from infrastructure, we expect the second largest driver of growth to be employee compensation as we add technical talent in priority areas.
“We currently expect another year of similarly significant [capital expenditures] dollar growth in 2026 as we continue aggressively pursuing opportunities to bring additional capacity online to meet the needs of our artificial intelligence efforts and business operations.”
“Not only has Meta made demonstrable strides with AI, but it’s helping to future-proof itself as a growth company, should its family of apps get affected by the current anti-trust case or changing social media sentiment,” said Mike Proulx, Forrester VP research director.
Meanwhile in his letter advocating for a world “empowered” by AI, Zuckerberg himself added a note of caution.
“The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take, and whether superintelligence will be a tool for personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society,” he said, reflecting the ongoing debate on the prevalence of AI.
“Meta says it ‘will need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source’ but many companies are vying feverously to win the superintelligence race,” said Proulx.
“But at what cost are they willing to do so? Mere trust in companies to do the right thing just isn’t going to cut it.”
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