Meta Platforms is pouring massive amounts of money into artificial intelligence, and the bet appears to be paying off through stronger advertising sales. The social media giant plans to spend up to 135 billion dollars on infrastructure this year. That amount exceeds the total economic output of many smaller countries. The company spent 39 billion dollars in 2024 and 72 billion dollars in 2025 on capital expenses, mostly for data centers. When CEO Mark Zuckerberg first revealed these ambitious spending plans back in October, investors reacted poorly. The stock fell about 7 percent in after-hours trading. But sentiment shifted dramatically this week. After Meta released its fourth-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, showing the new spending targets, shares jumped 10 percent on Thursday. The turnaround came because Meta demonstrated that artificial intelligence is fueling unprecedented growth in its advertising operations. “I think what we’re seeing is sort of a sustainable trend that’s largely grounded in some of the AI investments that they’ve made,” Benjamin Black, who covers internet companies for Deutsche Bank, said. Meta brought in 201 billion dollars in revenue during 2025, marking a 22 percent increase from the previous year. The company projects even stronger performance for the current quarter, with growth potentially reaching 34 percent. Those numbers represent remarkable expansion for a business that generated nearly 60 billion dollars just in the most recent three-month period. Zuckerberg suggested the company has only begun tapping into what artificial intelligence can deliver. “Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business. But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon,” he told investors and analysts during a conference call. Advertising dominates revenue Advertising accounts for almost all of Meta’s income. During the quarter that ended in December, ads made up 97 percent of total revenue. Company executives explained they currently lack sufficient computing power and infrastructure to fully execute their artificial intelligence plans, which explains the major data center expansion. “Demands for compute resources across the company have increased even faster than our supply,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Li stated. “We expect over the course of 2026 to have significantly more capacity this year as we add cloud. But we’ll likely still be constrained through much of 2026 until additional capacity from our own facilities comes online later in the year.” Li described specific improvements the company made in the fourth quarter. Meta doubled the number of graphics processing units used to train its system that ranks advertisements. The company also introduced a new learning architecture. These changes produced measurable results. People clicked on Facebook ads 3.5 percent more frequently. Instagram saw conversions—meaning actual purchases, subscriptions, or sales leads—increase by more than 1 percent. Across all Meta’s platforms, conversions rose 3 percent thanks to various artificial intelligence enhancements. Automated ad creation tools gain traction As reported by Cryptopolitan previously, Meta is also developing artificial intelligence tools that automatically create advertisements for businesses wanting to promote themselves on Facebook and Instagram. Li said revenue from video-generation tools reached a 10 billion dollar annual run rate in the fourth quarter. “The more compute the ad platform gets, the far better it performs, and that’s a real structural advantage that Meta has,” Black explained. “If you can see that yesterday’s spend is driving this month’s growth, then as a good business person, you’re going to continue to feed the beast.” Get seen where it counts. Advertise in Cryptopolitan Research and reach crypto’s sharpest investors and builders.
