Meta has been on an AI spending spree. Earnings show it's paying off

CNN

3 days ago

If Meta investors had concerns about the company's huge spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and talent, they're likely to be assuaged by its blockbuster earnings report on Wednesday. The results, as one analyst put it, indicates that 'AI is becoming a real revenue driver, not just hype.'
Meta on Wednesday posted earnings of $7.14 per share on $47.5 billion in revenue from the quarter ended June 30. Earnings per share were up 38% from the year-ago period and well above the $5.88 that Wall Street analysts had expected.
It also projected revenue from the current quarter will be between $47.5 billion and $50.5 billion, also ahead of analysts' expectations.
The strong results sent Meta shares up more than 9% in after-hours trading. The company's stock has risen 16% since the start of this year.
'Meta's blowout earnings and raised guidance highlight how AI is becoming a real revenue driver, not just hype,' Investing.com Senior Analyst Jesse Cohen said in a statement. 'The company's continued heavy investment in AI infrastructure signals it's playing the long game.'
The report came after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his approach to AI 'superintelligence' in a video and blog post on Wednesday morning. He wants everyone to have access to their own personal AI superintelligence, he said in the blog post, making people more productive so they can spend 'more time creating and connecting.'
'Our business continues to perform very well, which enables us to invest heavily in our AI efforts,' Meta said in a call with analysts Wednesday evening, adding that the company's performance in the quarter could be attributed to AI improving its core ad business.
Meta has been shelling out big bucks to recruit top AI talent away from rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Apple for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs team. The company is also spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build massive AI data centers.
On Friday, Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, one of the co-creators of ChatGPT who Meta hired away from OpenAI several weeks ago, will be the team's chief scientist.
Meta is in league with tech giants such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic that are all racing toward superintelligence, the theoretical point at which AI becomes smarter than all humans at all knowledge work. It's believed that if that milestone is reached, it could dramatically reshape the economy and the way people work, potentially creating significant new business opportunities for the companies that can provide the technology.
And the stakes may be especially high for Zuckerberg, who wants Meta to be more than just a social media company and has refocused it on AI after an unsuccessful pivot to the metaverse. The company is under pressure to deliver on the billions it's invested in data centers and chips, and it also has a growing smart glasses business that depends on the success of its AI efforts. And the company is coming from somewhat behind competitors, after reported delays in releasing the largest version of its new Llama 4 AI model.
Zuckerberg said Wednesday morning that he believes smart glasses will be the 'main computing device' for the AI era.
Despite its aggressive spending, Meta on Wednesday said its capital expenditures during the third quarter were $17 billion, nearly in line with Wall Street's estimate of $16.48 billion. And it narrowed — but did not raise — its full-year capital expenditure guidance, giving investors a more precise view of its spending plan.