Jauhn Etienne Villaruel

Article (news)

Agence France-Presse

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17775105374961738193501387Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 7.31.08 AM.webp" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">This photo illustration created on January 7, 2025, in Washington, DC, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.  Drew Angerer, AFP<br/></span></span></span></div><p>SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday defended massive spending on artificial intelligence that dragged down shares despite strong earnings boosted by the technology.</p><p>The social networking colossus raised its capital expenditures for this year to a range of $125 billion to $145 billion without laying out exactly how that investment would translate into profit.</p><p>&quot;The way to think about the investment is that we&#x27;re making a bet (on) the individual things that people care about, and that people are going to be more important in the future,&quot; Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings call, as analysts pressed him about the company&#x27;s heavy spending on AI.</p><p>He gave the example of a hot trend in &quot;agentic&quot; AI in which digital assistants handle computer tasks independently at the behest of people.</p><p>&quot;There are a lot of agents out there that people are building for different things, and there aren&#x27;t that many that I would want to give to my mother,&quot; Zuckerberg said.</p><p>&quot;I think getting to that quality bar is something that I care about more than hitting a specific week for launching (a new product) or something like that.&quot;</p><p>Zuckerberg spotlighted a new Muse Spark AI model built by Meta&#x27;s nascent &quot;Superintelligence Lab&quot;, saying its technology will be put to work in Meta&#x27;s offerings such as smartglasses and its advertising system.</p><p>&quot;We are trying novel things,&quot; Zuckerberg said.</p><p>The AI investment from the company that owns Instagram and Facebook is not directly tied to a revenue stream as with Amazon, Microsoft and Google, which sell their AI-powered cloud services to clients worldwide.</p><p>Meta sent tremors on Wall Street by announcing in its earnings release that expenses at the tech giant notched up to $33.4 billion as it chases &quot;superintelligence&quot; through major infrastructure buys, and went on a hiring spree for top AI talent.</p><p>Shares dropped more than 6 percent even though the company topped forecasts with a profit of $26.8 billion on revenue of $56.3 billion in the quarter.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>HEADWINDS AND SCRUTINY </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>Adding to investor unease about Meta, chief financial officer Susan Li told analysts Meta continues to monitor legal and regulatory &quot;headwinds&quot; in the US and Europe, including social media addiction lawsuits.</p><p>&quot;We continue to see scrutiny on youth related issues and have additional trials scheduled for this year in the US, which may ultimately result in a material loss,&quot; Li warned.</p><p>A Los Angeles jury in March found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman because of an addictive design of their social media platforms, ordering the companies to pay millions of dollars in damages.</p><p>The verdict hands plaintiffs in more than a thousand similar pending cases significant leverage -- and signals to the tech industry that juries are prepared to hold social media companies accountable for the mental health toll of their design choices.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEOS</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2dGxuXk4Hek?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UVlW58-zr4I?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div>

<p>Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg defended massive spending on artificial intelligence that dragged down shares despite strong earnings boosted by the technology.</p>

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg defended massive spending on artificial intelligence that dragged down shares despite strong earnings boosted by the technology.

Meta chief Zuckerberg doubles down on AI spending

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Meta chief Zuckerberg doubles down on AI spending

Agence France-Presse

Published April 30, 2026 08:57 AM PHT

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