Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg laid out his AI vision that outperformed Q2 expectations and sent shares soaring

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

• Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent a lot of time during the past few months building his news superintelligence AI team. 

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects to deliver “personal superintelligence for everyone” but his ambitious bets on AI are impacting the company’s cash flows and are likely to hit expenses even harder as Meta soups up its AI capabilities and continues its hiring spree. 

The social media giant spent $17 billion on capital expenditures during the quarter, mostly on AI infrastructure and data centers and it expects to continue to spend heavily through 2026. Still, Meta’s shares soared 11.5% in after-hours trading after delivering blockbuster second quarter financial results. Revenue cruised 22% higher to $47.5 billion, and its core advertising business generated $46.6 billion in ad revenue across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Daily active users grew to 3.5 billion people and profit margins improved, with net income rising 36% to $18.3 billion compared to last year. 

“The intersection of technology and culture is where Meta focuses,” said Zuckerberg in an Instagram reel defining Meta’s aims for superintelligence. The new lab will focus on developing the next generation of Meta’s models, he said. 

$META CFO signals sharp rise in CapEx for 2026

".we currently expect another year of similarly significant CapEx $ growth in 2026, as we continue aggressively pursuing opportunities to bring additional capacity online to meet the needs of our AI efforts & business operations" https://t.co/BDmytHqFBA

— The Transcript (@TheTranscript_) July 30, 2025

Zuckerberg said the company is building an “elite, talent-dense team,” led by one of the world’s youngest billionaires, Alexandr Wang. 

“I spent a lot of time building this team this quarter,” said Zuckerberg. “The reason so many people are excited to join is because Meta has all of the ingredients required to build leading models and deliver them to billions of people.”

The new superintelligence team will have access to “unparalleled compute” as Meta builds out new gigawatt+ clusters. 

“We’re making all these investments because we have conviction that superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do,” Zuckerberg said.