Business 4 min read By Bethany Hadley
Meta to spend up to $145bn in 2026 as AI infrastructure race accelerates
Meta plans capital expenditure of up to $145 billion in 2026, more than the military budgets of every country except the United States, China and Russia, as it pours money into AI data centres and computing capacity.
Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion on capital projects in 2026, a figure that exceeds the military budgets of every country in the world except the United States, China and Russia, as the company accelerates its push into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The projected capital expenditure is roughly double the $72.2 billion Meta spent a year earlier, according to company filings. The company said the increase will fund its core business, with higher component prices and additional data centre costs driving the rise. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said AI would account for a «significant portion» of the total.
The scale of the spending places Meta alongside the world's largest military powers in pure financial terms. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $954 billion on its military in 2025, followed by China at an estimated $336 billion and Russia at an estimated $190 billion. Germany, in fourth place, spent $113 billion, while India allocated $92 billion. Meta's planned capital budget of $145 billion would rank above all of those except the top three.
Meta's capital expenditure has climbed steeply as the company has shifted its focus towards AI. Recorded capex stood at $28.1 billion in 2023, rising to $39.23 billion in 2024 and $72.22 billion in 2025, according to SEC filings. That 2025 figure exceeded Meta's own forecast of up to $65 billion. Property and equipment spending followed a similar trajectory, reaching $69.69 billion last year.
On top of the capital budget, Meta projects total expenses of up to $169 billion in 2026, reflecting higher compensation and recruitment costs for AI talent as well as infrastructure spending. The company has been building large data centres and securing computing capacity from outside providers to support its AI systems.
Zuckerberg described 2026 as a pivotal year for Meta's effort to build what he calls «superintelligence». Speaking on the company's second-quarter earnings call, he said AI usage across its products and businesses continued to ramp, and that Meta would keep investing aggressively in infrastructure to meet demand.
«We expect that a significant portion of our compute is going to go towards training our models, growing our core business and delivering personal agents and new products, but we also expect to grow a large business serving large customers as well,» he said.
The company is developing personal agents that it expects to form the foundation of its next wave of products and revenue lines. Zuckerberg also pointed to an enterprise opportunity, including APIs, business agents and potentially selling compute directly to large customers.
«AI is accelerating our core business today, powering our next generation of products, and opening the door to entirely new enterprise opportunities,» he said in a press release. «The results are already showing, and I'm optimistic about the potential ahead.»
Meta is not alone in raising its infrastructure budget. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are on track to spend about $730 billion on AI in 2026, according to Reuters, up from previous estimates of $600 billion. The revised figure underlines how the largest technology companies are treating computing capacity as the central competitive battleground of the AI era.
The comparison with national defence budgets has become a recurring feature of the AI investment boom. Meta's capital spending alone would outstrip the military expenditure of every country except the three largest defence spenders, a measure of how quickly private technology budgets have grown relative to state spending.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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