Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at WSJ Innovators, held at the Museum of Modern Art on October 29, 2025, in New York City (Lexie Moreland/Getty Images)

Meta rises after sales, earnings beat and Q1 revenue guidance exceeds expectations

Even with spending much higher than expected, Meta still expects operating income to increase year on year in 2026.

Rani Molla

1/28/26 4:09PM

Meta released its fourth-quarter results after the close on Wednesday, with sales coming in at a record high of $59.9 billion, well above the $58.4 billion Wall Street had expected, and earnings per share of $8.88 also far north of the $8.19 consensus estimate.

The stock jumped more than 6% in after-hours trading.

For the current quarter, the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant expects sales of $53.5 billion to $56.5 billion, well ahead of the consensus call for $51.3 billion.

However, those higher sales are coming with even more aggressive spending: Meta’s capex outlook for 2026 is $115 billion to $135 billion, exceeding the $110.6 billion estimate from analysts. Full-year estimated expenses of $162 billion to $169 billion are also much more than the consensus call for $151 billion.

“Despite the meaningful step up in infrastructure investment, in 2026 we expect to deliver operating income that is above 2025 operating income,” according to the press release.

Generally Meta’s capex growth has been growing faster than its revenue, something that’s been raising investor scrutiny more so than it has for the tech giant’s peers, which have cloud business revenue to more directly offset their spending on AI. On a related note, Meta’s expected profit margins have deteriorated since the end of 2024, unlike any of its megacap hyperscaler counterparts.

Ahead of earnings, Deutsche Bank wrote that while it thinks Meta is “positioned favorably” in the AI race, “investor fears around the potential impact to earnings from the projected spend, as well as reduced financial flexibility from the elevated investments in the near-to-mid-term, could somewhat outweigh optimism around faster growth.”

Looking forward, investors will be focused on the progress of Meta’s AI models and how its extensive spending on artificial intelligence will compare with the additional revenue earned from those investments.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5