Meta Capital Expenditure, September 2026: Inside the $145 Billion Vertical Integration Play

Meta's 2026 capex guidance of up to $145 billion — nearly double FY2025's $69.69 billion — is backed by 6.6 GW of nuclear agreements, a transatlantic subsea cable, custom silicon, and a nascent cloud business already disrupting neocloud rivals.

When Microsoft, Meta, and Google reported combined capital expenditure that Stocktwits calculated at $725 billion in a single earnings cycle, the figure did more than impress — it effectively ended a months-long debate on whether hyperscaler AI spending had lost discipline. For Meta specifically, the number crystallises a transformation that has been building since the company weathered its metaverse-induced reversal in 2022: by any infrastructure measure, it is now one of the most capital-intensive enterprises on earth.

The baseline tells its own story. Slicast's compilation of Meta's SEC XBRL filings shows capital expenditure reached $69.69 billion in FY2025, an 87.1% increase from the $37.26 billion reported in FY2024, and a capex intensity of 35% of the $200.97 billion in revenue Meta earned that year — placing it third among six tracked hyperscalers by intensity, behind only Oracle. The company then raised its 2026 full-year guidance to $130–145 billion; achieved at the midpoint, that would represent a near-doubling again in a single year. The most recent quarterly print — $19.00 billion in the quarter ending March 31, 2026 — indicates the pace is holding. On September 5, Meta activated its $1.2 billion AI-optimised data centre in Kuna, Idaho, its second dedicated AI campus, a physical marker against which the verbal guidance can now be measured.

What separates Meta's build from a conventional capacity race is the breadth of vertical integration it is pursuing simultaneously. On power, the company has reportedly signed 6.6 GW of nuclear agreements spanning Oklo, Vistra, and TerraPower — including a deal for eight Natrium advanced reactors announced in August 2026, and a separate Oklo agreement for 1.2 GW earmarked specifically for AI data centre operations; an Alberta regulator separately approved a 932-megawatt gas plant whose sole customer is Meta. On connectivity, Meta filed in August 2026 for permits to build the Aurora subsea cable linking the United States and Denmark, extending its AI backbone across the Atlantic. On silicon, MediaTek is reportedly advancing a 400G SerDes design on a 2nm process partly targeting Meta AI ASIC orders, while Broadcom locked in multi-year chip supply agreements covering Meta alongside OpenAI and Google. And in cloud services, the August 2026 launch of Meta Compute — an external GPU-rental and hosted-model business — sent shares in CoreWeave and Nebius down sharply on the announcement, with September reporting confirming that IREN joined the declines as Meta's ambitions became clearer to the market.

Financing an ambition of this scale has required structural creativity alongside cash. In August 2026, BlackRock took a majority stake in Meta's El Paso data centre campus through a co-ownership arrangement that recycles capital without equity dilution; EdgeConneX separately sought a reported $2.5 billion bank pledge to fund Meta's Ohio campus. According to reporting tracked by Slicast, Meta has been using asset-backed guarantees to lever its balance sheet, while its future AI data centre lease obligations have swelled to more than $250 billion. A national agreement with US trade unions, signed in August 2026, establishes a construction labour framework across the programme; Meta has reportedly offered electricians seven-figure annual salaries and launched its own vocational training school to address a structural skilled-trades shortage. Autonomous robots are being deployed at construction sites alongside human crews.

The risks are real and quantifiable. Meta's August 2026 earnings release showed Q2 net profit declining 14% and operating profit falling 8% even as revenue grew — the hallmark of a company running down margin headroom to fund expansion. The $14 billion data centre project is reportedly encountering difficulty securing affordable insurance as construction costs and climate risk assessments push premiums higher, with implications for project-level finance on future builds. Talent flow bears watching: Groq recruited Meta's network chief Ola Kasali in late August 2026, and Shamez Hemani — a former senior figure on the OpenAI Stargate programme who had briefly joined Meta Compute — moved to Anthropic in early September. On the geopolitical front, Meta's reported attempt to acquire Chinese AI startup Manus prompted China to tighten border procedures in August 2026, illustrating that aggressive AI acquisitions carry diplomatic externalities. The open-weights coalition Meta co-leads with Nvidia and more than 70 signatories, positioned explicitly against closed-model providers, is itself a political signal that could complicate regulatory relationships in markets where the open-versus-closed debate has government attention.

Three signals will test the investment thesis before year-end. First, Q3 and Q4 profitability: the market needs evidence that revenue from advertising, Reality Labs, and early Meta Compute contracts is absorbing, rather than merely deferring, the margin compression visible in Q2. Second, Meta Compute's commercial traction — concrete customer commitments and utilisation data, not launch announcements, will establish whether the cloud business is a genuine revenue diversifier or a strategic capacity reserve. Third, nuclear permitting: the 6.6 GW of contracted agreements is commercial commitment, not operational capacity; the Natrium reactors require NRC construction licences, and slippage there would extend the payback horizon on the most capital-intensive component of the plan. The $725 billion headline has quieted the critics for now. The verdict on Meta's infrastructure supercycle will be written in profit margins and megawatt-hours.