Zuckerberg says Meta made a $100 billion-plus AI infrastructure bet without knowing if it would work

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed something investors probably suspected. Meta committed an enormous sum to AI infrastructure without any guarantee the projects would pay off. According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg said Meta spent hundreds of billions of dollars last year on AI infrastructure without knowing whether those projects would succeed. The bet, by the numbers The comments came in a podcast episode released on October 12–13, 2026. In it, Zuckerberg described a decision made in late 2025 to put between $100 billion and $200 billion into AI infrastructure. Meta made that commitment before it had developed any successful models. Chief financial officer Susan Li raised concerns about potential pitfalls of the plan, according to the research findings. Meta went ahead anyway. The company’s capital expenditure outlook for 2026 sits at $130–145 billion. That compares with $72 billion in 2025. Capital expenditure, or capex, is money a company spends on long-lived physical assets. For Meta, that means data centers, chips, and the power deals to keep them running. Meta’s infrastructure chief said more than $100 billion in 2026 alone is directed at infrastructure development. That includes cu...