Meta plunged nearly 11% Thursday after the Facebook-parent forecast higher expenses over its plans to “invest aggressively” in artificial intelligence.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant’s stock closed at $441.38 — wiping roughly $170 billion in market cap.
Zuckerberg’s net worth also took a massive hit, wiping out about $18 billion and dropping him well below archrival Elon Musk, who is No. 3 on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
The 39-year-old boss — who received a mere $1 salary from Meta in 2023 — has a fortune estimated at $157.2 billion, most of which is tied to his 13% stake in Meta, to trail Musk by $27 billion.
Investors appear to be losing patience with Zuckerberg’s prodigious artificial intelligence investment after the company signaled deeper spending and a long road to profitability while reporting lighter-than-expected revenue late Wednesday.
Meta said Wednesday that it would increase its investment in AI projects by as much as $5 billion and also raised its full-year capital expenditures to $35 billion to $40 billion, up from $30 billion to $37 billion.
“We expect capital expenditures will continue to increase next year as we invest aggressively to support our ambitious AI research and product development efforts,” the company said after reporting earnings.
Zuckerberg told analysts on a conference call that the focus on AI would “grow our investment envelope meaningfully before we make much revenue from some of these new products.”
“On the upside, once our new AI services reach scale, we have a strong track record of monetizing them effectively,” he added.
His comments and the quarterly results tempered expectations for Meta’s AI investments after a series of smash-hit quarters for the social media giant.
Meta enjoyed the biggest one-day gain in market capitalization in Wall Street history after its last quarterly report, when it posted robust results and announced a first-ever dividend.
“Investors are skeptical of the growing AI spending. Some of those investments could take years to pay off,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence.
“But Meta is in the AI race to win it, and Meta AI could be a dark horse. It has a built-in audience through its existing apps, and it will have an advantage in eventual monetization through its ad ecosystem,” Enberg said.
Meta’s AI rivals include Google and Microsoft, which has a multiyear, $10 billion partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
Just last month, Microsoft revealed that it was planning a data-center project alongside OpenAI that could cost as much as $100 billion and include an AI supercomputer called “Stargate” that’s anticipated to launch in 2028.
