Meta Reports Q2 Earnings Amid AI Investing Concerns

Meta reports second-quarter earnings after the bell today, and the numbers themselves may matter less than what CEO Mark Zuckerberg says about the company's AI spending trajectory. Meta stock is down nearly 10% year to date and has struggled to regain its footing as investors increasingly question Zuckerberg's capital expenditure plans, according to Yahoo Finance's reporting ahead of the report.

The scale of Meta's AI commitment is genuinely enormous. The company has said it plans to spend upwards of $145 billion this year, with the bulk going toward its data center buildout, and capital expenditures are set to roughly double to $33.15 billion for the quarter alone. For Q2, Meta is expected to report earnings per share of $7.14 on revenue of $60.23 billion, with advertising revenue projected at $58.99 billion, up 26% from the same period last year.

What makes Meta's situation genuinely different from other hyperscalers reporting this earnings season is how it's funding the buildout. Unlike Alphabet, which posted negative free cash flow and suspended its buyback program in Q2 while taking on new debt to fund its AI infrastructure, Meta is funding its $125 billion AI buildout entirely from its own cash, according to Yahoo Finance's analysis comparing the two companies. Meta's Q1 operating cash flow of $32.23 billion and $81.2 billion in cash and securities give the company real cushion against its own spending, a distinction worth understanding alongside our earlier coverage of Tesla and Alphabet's own earnings-driven selloff this month.

Meta separately announced a $14 billion, 1-gigawatt data center partnership with BlackRock in Texas this week, with BlackRock holding an 80% stake and Meta retaining 20%, a structure that lets Meta expand compute capacity without carrying the entire capital burden on its own balance sheet.

Meta CFO Susan Li has given investors a specific reassurance heading into today's report, confirming the company retains the flexibility to "bring it online more slowly or reduce our spending in future years" if AI investment returns lag expectations, according to 247WallSt's reporting on the earnings setup. That flexibility matters given the broader market mood. Barclays strategists warned in a recent note that "AI capex enthusiasm is beginning to cool," and Alphabet's stock dropped 6% after raising its own capex guidance just last week, a reaction we covered in our story on Tesla and Alphabet's brutal earnings-day selloff.

In my four years in sales at a research and advisory firm, I heard directly from CMOs and CEOs about what they wanted from AI, and the underlying question was always some version of "how do we know this spending is actually working." Meta's earnings today are a genuinely important test case for that exact question at the scale of one of the world's largest companies. If Meta can show AI investment is directly improving ad targeting and engagement while its spending is funded from its own operating cash rather than debt, that's a meaningfully different signal than what markets have punished at Alphabet and Tesla this earnings season.

For businesses evaluating how markets are pricing AI spending discipline right now, Meta's report is worth watching closely as a comparison point against its peers, particularly around whether self-funded AI capex earns more investor patience than debt-funded spending.

Meta reports Q2 earnings today with analysts expecting $60.23 billion in revenue and $7.14 earnings per share, while investors scrutinize the company's plan to spend upwards of $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Unlike Alphabet, which is taking on debt and posted negative free cash flow to fund its own AI buildout, Meta is funding its spending entirely from operating cash. CFO Susan Li has reassured investors the company retains flexibility to slow spending if AI returns don't materialize as expected.