Meta raises 2026 capex guidance to $145 billion as AI infrastructure buildout accelerates, signaling sustained commitment to compute infrastructure.
Meta Platforms posted Q2 2026 earnings per share of $6.18, badly missing the $7.14 consensus estimate, before raising its full-year capital expenditure guidance and sending shares tumbling nearly 8% in after-hours trading.
Revenue performance was solid by the numbers. Meta brought in $60.8 billion for the quarter, edging past the $60.2 billion analysts had penciled in. Advertising revenue hit $59.3 billion, topping the $59.07 billion expectation.
The capex story, however, overshadowed the revenue beat. Meta bumped its full-year 2026 capex guidance to $135–145 billion, up from the $125–145 billion range set earlier in the year. The low end of the range jumped $10 billion in a single quarter. With Q1 2026 capex already at $19.84 billion, the company is signaling even more aggressive spending through the remainder of the year, directed almost entirely toward data centers and AI infrastructure.
The timing aligned with a significant partnership announcement: the day before earnings, Meta revealed a collaboration with BlackRock to build a $14 billion data center in Texas, expected to deliver 1 gigawatt of capacity.
The $6.18 EPS versus the $7.14 estimate represents roughly a 13% miss—the kind of shortfall that prompts institutional investors to quickly reassess their models. The nearly 8% after-hours decline wiped tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value in a single evening session.
Notably, Meta's earnings report contained zero references to cryptocurrency or blockchain-related initiatives, a marked departure from the company's past efforts to launch its own stablecoin, Libra (later renamed Diem).
The Texas data center's 1-gigawatt power requirement is just one facility among many being planned industry-wide. This escalating energy demand creates interesting dynamics for Bitcoin miners, many of whom hold energy contracts and infrastructure that could become increasingly valuable as AI companies compete for power capacity. Some miners have already begun pivoting toward providing compute services to AI firms, effectively monetizing their energy access in multiple directions.