Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visits U.S. Capitol for Senate meetings

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks through the US Capitol in March (Nathan Posner/Getty Images)

Meta posts an earnings and revenue beat — and a huge capex bill

The social media giant reported earnings after the bell Wednesday.

4/29/26 4:06PM

Meta reported earnings Wednesday that beat expectations:

Earnings per share were $10.44, versus analysts’ expected $6.67. That’s partly thanks to a tax benefit, without which it would have been $3.13 lower (still a beat at $7.31).
Revenue came in at $56.3 billion, compared with the $55.557 billion FactSet analyst consensus forecast.

Despite the beat, the stock sank more than 6% after-hours after Meta said its capital expenditure for 2026 would be between $125 billion and 145 billion, compared with analysts’ $122.6 billion (and higher than the $115 billion to $135 billion it estimated last quarter). “This reflects our expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity,” the company said.

Analysts and Meta itself had been expecting more than 30% year-over-year growth in quarterly revenue, which would mark the company’s fastest expansion since 2021, driven in part by AI-powered targeting improvements. The company’s all-important ads business jumped 33% in that time to $55 billion in revenue.

On the earnings call, investors will be looking for reassurance that the massive AI spend is translating into more ad revenue. They’ll also be listening for signs of new AI-driven revenue streams beyond advertising — especially after China blocked its acquisition of AI agent startup Manus earlier this week, from which Meta had hoped to secure business subscription revenue.

Updates on Meta’s latest AI models — including the recently released Muse Spark, which some analysts see as a potential growth driver — will also be in focus.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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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.

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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.

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

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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

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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