Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
Meta Platforms ' stock suffered its biggest one-day loss since October 2022 as skepticism about the payoff from its aggressive artificial intelligence spending plans overshadowed strong results.
Shares dropped more than 11%.
The social media giant lifted its 2025 capital expenditures guidance as it races against competitors to build out advanced AI tools. Meta now expects capex to range between $70 billion and $72 billion, versus prior guidance of $66 billion to $72 billion.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's ambitious spending plans during the earnings call Wednesday.
"It's pretty early, but I think we're seeing the returns in the core business," he said. "That's giving us a lot of confidence that we should be investing a lot more, and we want to make sure that we're not underinvesting."
Zuckerberg said the company is "aggressively" preemptively building up capacity to prepare for the arrival of superintelligence, where Meta will be "ideally positioned for a generational paradigm shift in many large opportunities."