April 30, 2026 – Meta recently released its quarterly financial report, revealing a substantial loss of $4 billion in its Reality Labs division. This unit is in charge of developing AR smart glasses, VR headsets, and related VR software businesses.
For Meta, continuous losses in this department have become the norm. Over the 21 quarterly financial reports since 2021, Meta has accumulated losses of 83.5billionintheRealityLabsbusiness,averagingaround4 billion per quarter.
As Meta scales back its metaverse (metaverse can be translated as “metaverse strategy” here), its investment in the artificial intelligence (AI) field is set to reach astronomical levels.
Admittedly, Meta has a solid financial foundation. In the first quarter of this year, the social media giant reported a net profit of 26.8billion,asignificant6156.3 billion.
Although Meta has its roots firmly planted in the social media sector, its current core objective is to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic in the AI race. Meta anticipates that its capital expenditures will reach between 125billionand145 billion in 2026, far exceeding analysts’ expectations and the company’s previous estimates.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated during a public conference call with investors on Wednesday, “We’ve raised our infrastructure capital expenditure forecast for the year, mainly due to rising hardware component costs, especially the soaring prices of memory… We’re making every effort to enhance the efficiency of our investment funds.”
Meta has already invested heavily in creating a metaverse ecosystem that has failed to gain traction in the market. Now, to develop a truly market-recognized super AI, the required investment will only be higher. Last year, Meta embarked on a high-cost talent recruitment drive, poaching over 50 AI researchers and engineers from competitors. This move helped the company officially launch its fully upgraded AI model, Muse Spark, at the beginning of this month. Although Zuckerberg claimed that the launch of this model led to a significant surge in user engagement with Meta’s AI products, the research, development, and operational costs of AI products continue to rise.
During the financial report conference call, an investor expressed deep concerns and inquired about Meta’s capital expenditure plans for 2027. The official response failed to allay market worries.
Meta CFO Susan Li replied, “We’re not disclosing specific capital expenditure expectations for 2027 at this time. To be frank, the company is still in the dynamic planning stage internally, calculating the computing power and production capacity requirements for the coming years. Based on past experience, we’ve consistently underestimated our computing power consumption needs.”
Therefore, despite its impressive quarterly performance, Meta’s investors remain lacking in confidence. After the financial report was released, the company’s after-hours stock price dropped by more than 5%.
