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Meta’s “up to $65 billion” figure was a forecast for the company’s total 2025 capital expenditures, not a standalone AI budget. Announced in January 2025, the $60–65 billion range covered data centers, servers, networking and other infrastructure, including principal payments on finance leases. Meta said the spending would support generative AI while continuing to fund its core social and advertising businesses.
What the $65 billion figure meant
Meta Platforms published a full-year 2025 capital-expenditure forecast of $60 billion to $65 billion in its January 29, 2025 earnings release. The accounting measure included principal payments on finance leases. Meta did not report a separate dollar amount for AI, so the headline number should not be read as an AI-only allocation.
The company said infrastructure costs would be the largest driver of expense growth, followed by compensation for technical talent. Its CFO Outlook Commentary stated: The majority of our capital expenditures in 2025 will continue to be directed to our core business.
In practice, that means the same spending plan covered AI capacity and the systems supporting Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Meta’s advertising operations.
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What Meta planned to build
Data centers and computing capacity
Contemporaneous reporting described a major expansion of data-center capacity for training and running AI systems. Bloomberg reported that Mark Zuckerberg expected about one gigawatt of computing power to be online during 2025 and more than 1.3 million GPUs by year-end. Those were announced expectations, not an independently verified year-end result.
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Zuckerberg also described a planned data center as “so large that it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” according to Bloomberg’s January 24, 2025 report. The description conveys the physical scale of the build-out; it does not convert the project into an AI-only cost.
Hardware, networking and custom chips
Meta’s infrastructure approach combines large numbers of general-purpose GPUs with CPUs, high-speed networking and internally designed accelerator hardware. Its MTIA chips are aimed primarily at inference workloads, while specialized data-center designs and the Research SuperCluster support AI research and model development. Meta says it designs, builds and operates much of this stack to tune it for its workloads.
That model makes AI capital-intensive: the bill can include buildings, power systems, cooling, racks, networking and chips before a model serves a single user. The available disclosures do not identify which vendors supplied equipment behind the $65 billion forecast.
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Was all of the $65 billion for AI?
No. Meta explicitly said most 2025 capital expenditures would continue to support its core business. AI was a major reason for accelerating infrastructure investment, but the forecast also covered capacity for existing products and services.
- AI-related capacity: training and inference computers, AI-optimized data centers, networking and related power and cooling systems.
- Core-business capacity: servers, facilities and network infrastructure needed for Meta’s established apps, advertising systems and other operations.
- People and operating costs: technical hiring and ongoing electricity, maintenance and model-operation expenses are not identical to capital expenditures.
Consequently, “Meta is spending $65 billion on AI” is an imprecise shorthand. “Meta forecast up to $65 billion in total 2025 capex, partly to expand AI infrastructure” is the more accurate description.
How Meta’s forecast changed and what it actually spent
| Date | Figure | What it represented |
|---|---|---|
| January 29, 2025 | $60–65 billion | Initial full-year 2025 capex forecast, including finance-lease principal payments; AI and core business combined. |
| April 30, 2025 | $64–72 billion | Revised 2025 forecast after additional AI-related data-center investment and higher infrastructure-hardware costs. |
| January 28, 2026 | $72.22 billion | Reported full-year 2025 capex, including finance-lease principal payments. |
| January 28, 2026 | $115–135 billion | Meta’s initial full-year 2026 capex outlook. |
| July 29, 2026 | $31.08 billion | Capital expenditures reported for the second quarter of 2026. |
| July 29, 2026 | $130–145 billion | Updated full-year 2026 outlook, narrowed from $125–145 billion; higher component prices were the main reason for the higher low end, with additional data-center costs also contributing. |
Meta therefore did ultimately report more than $65 billion in 2025 capex: $72.22 billion. That result should be compared with the revised April range of $64–72 billion, not treated as proof that $72.22 billion was spent exclusively on AI.
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How to interpret “Meta’s AI spending”
There is no single accounting line that captures everything people might call AI spending. Capital expenditure pays for long-lived assets. AI researchers, engineers and other specialists appear mainly in compensation and operating expenses. Cloud services, electricity and data-center operations are recurring costs. A company can increase all three without presenting an AI-only total.
For a meaningful comparison with another company, match the fiscal period and accounting definition, check whether finance-lease principal is included, and determine whether the other figure covers only AI or also broader infrastructure. Mixing Meta’s total capex with another company’s narrowly defined AI investment can produce a misleading ranking.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the latest outlook says about the trajectory
As of Meta’s July 29, 2026 second-quarter release, the company expected $130–145 billion in 2026 capex and had reported $31.08 billion for the quarter. Meta attributed the outlook change mainly to higher component pricing and, to a lesser extent, additional data-center costs for future capacity.
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Zuckerberg said in that release: AI is accelerating our core business today, powering our next generation of products, and opening the door to entirely new enterprise opportunities.
This is a statement of strategy, not evidence that the 2025 investment produced a particular financial return. The reported figures establish what Meta forecast and spent, not whether the spending will generate a specified payoff.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: The January 2025 “up to $65 billion” announcement was Meta’s total 2025 capital-expenditure forecast, including finance-lease principal payments. It supported both AI expansion and the core business; Meta later raised the forecast to $64–72 billion and reported $72.22 billion in actual 2025 capex.
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