Meta AI Capex and Infrastructure, September 2026: $69.7 Billion Spend and the Road to Custom Silicon

Meta shares closed at $741.24 on September 21, 2026, up 11.3% on the day, with no report identifying a specific catalyst — a session that landed as FY2025 capital expenditure had reached $69.69 billion, up 87.1% year on year, and new infrastructure commitments continued to accumulate.

Meta shares closed at $741.24 on September 21, recording a single-session gain of 11.3%. No report in Slicast's coverage identifies the specific catalyst for that move. What the coverage does document is that the session arrived at a moment when Meta's AI infrastructure program had accumulated significant weight — in capital committed, power contracted, and silicon in development.

The capex figures alone mark a company operating at a different scale than most of its peers. Meta's capital expenditure reached $69.69 billion in fiscal 2025, an 87.1% increase from the $37.26 billion spent in fiscal 2024 and equivalent to 35% of the $200.97 billion in FY2025 revenue. In the single quarter ending March 31, 2026, the company spent $19.00 billion — the largest single-quarter figure in its reported history. Among seven hyperscalers tracked by Slicast, Meta ranks third in capex intensity, behind Oracle. New commitments reported in September deepened that picture: the Hyperion campus is expanding to five gigawatts with a $50 billion Louisiana investment; a $1.2 billion AI-optimized data center in Kuna, Idaho has gone live; and CleanSpark disclosed that Meta stands behind a $6.6 billion, 20-year AI data-center lease in Georgia, with a $2.23 billion debt-financing plan announced alongside it. CoreWeave's reported contract backlog of $104 billion encompasses a Meta agreement that has expanded to $21 billion.

Power procurement has become a distinct strategic track. Meta has signed agreements with TerraPower for eight Natrium advanced-reactor plants and with Oklo for 1.2 gigawatts of nuclear output. A separate 20-year agreement supporting an Illinois nuclear facility was reported in September, alongside a 144-megawatt solar purchase-power agreement with Apex Clean Energy in Texas, under which Meta receives all environmental rights and renewable-energy credits. On the connectivity side, Meta has filed for the Aurora subsea cable linking the United States and Denmark.

Multiple September reports described plans to deploy the internally developed Arke inference chip, with separate reports also naming a chip called MTIA 450 on a first-half 2027 timeline, and a second chip called Astrid targeting 2027. Most reports cited reduced reliance on Nvidia for inference workloads as the stated objective. In parallel, Broadcom has locked in a multi-year deal with Meta covering networking and custom silicon. Meta's Muse agentic platform was reported in September to be generating elevated CPU demand at scale in addition to GPU requirements, a development cited as supportive of Arm Holdings valuations. JPMorgan upgraded Meta's rating in September, though no coverage links that action to the September 21 session move specifically.

The financial architecture supporting this program has its own logic and its own risks. Meta has employed asset guarantees to finance infrastructure without equity dilution, and BlackRock acquired a majority ownership stake in the El Paso data-center campus under a co-ownership structure. The combined capital expenditure of Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon was reported at $725 billion for 2026, up 77% year on year. Against that backdrop, the headwinds are real. A September report placed Meta's $14 billion data-center project under insurance market stress from rising construction costs and climate exposure. Multiple U.S. states have moved to roll back AI data-center tax incentives previously granted to Meta, Amazon, and Google, adding cost uncertainty to future site economics. Amazon and Meta were identified among a group of five hyperscalers facing AI cash-flow scrutiny from their elevated capital expenditure.

Three signals are worth monitoring as this program matures. The first is whether Arke meets its first-half 2027 deployment timeline — and whether Astrid deploys in 2027 as reported — as a delay would extend reliance on Nvidia for inference workloads. The second is whether the Louisiana Hyperion expansion and the CleanSpark Georgia facility progress through permitting and financing, given the insurance market headwinds and tax-break rollbacks now in play. The third is the trajectory of state-level data-center tax policy: whether the rollbacks reported in September spread further or remain limited in scope. No report in the coverage explains the September 21 session gain.