Meta Platforms is poised to unveil its second-quarter financial results on Wednesday after the market closes. Wall Street analysts, as surveyed by LSEG, are projecting adjusted earnings per share of $7.22 on revenue of $60.17 billion. This forecast suggests a robust 26% year-over-year revenue increase from the $47.52 billion reported in the same quarter last year, largely attributed to the continued integration of artificial intelligence advancements into its core advertising operations.
However, beyond the robust health of its digital ad business, investors are keenly observing Meta’s strategic pivot and its capacity to challenge established leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the fiercely competitive AI models and services arena. The earnings call is expected to feature significant discourse from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding the company’s initiatives to directly monetize its extensive AI endeavors.
Meta has been making notable strides in the AI landscape. Earlier this month, the company introduced its Muse Spark 1.1 model, hailed by AI Chief Alexandr Wang as its most potent offering yet for agentic and coding applications, all while being positioned at a more competitive price point than its rivals. Furthermore, the release of Muse Image, which incorporates advanced features, is now accessible to users who subscribe to Meta’s new monthly plans, first unveiled in May.
This aggressive push into AI is underpinned by a significant strategic restructuring since Wang joined Meta in June 2025, a move that was part of a substantial $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, Wang’s former company. Meta is channeling considerable capital into its AI infrastructure, striving to keep pace with tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft in the critical acquisition of data centers, AI chips, and the underlying systems necessary to power sophisticated AI models and their associated workloads.
The company’s commitment to expanding its data center footprint is evident. On Tuesday, Meta announced a significant joint venture with BlackRock to develop a $14 billion data center project in El Paso, Texas. This announcement follows closely on the heels of its disclosure that its expansive Hyperion data center project in rural Louisiana is projected to exceed $50 billion. Earlier in July, Meta also outlined plans for a $9 billion data center in Alberta, Canada.
Despite these ambitious investments, Meta shares have experienced a 10% decline year-to-date, significantly underperforming the Nasdaq. This performance raises questions on Wall Street about the potential return on these substantial capital expenditures. Analysts at Wedbush highlighted in a recent report that “the gap between capex intensity and diversified monetization remains the central debate for the stock.” While acknowledging Meta’s valuation discount compared to its peers, they maintain a “hold” rating, citing ongoing uncertainties.
In its April earnings report, Meta revised its full-year capital expenditure forecast upward, setting a new high at $145 billion from a previous projection of $135 billion. For the second quarter, analysts anticipate Meta’s capital expenditure to reach $33.9 billion, with projections for the full year standing at $136.7 billion. This substantial investment strategy echoes moves by competitors, such as Alphabet, which recently increased its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to as much as $205 billion.
Notably, Meta remains the sole major hyperscaler without an established cloud infrastructure business. However, Zuckerberg has signaled a strategic shift, indicating the company’s intention to explore offering some AI capacity to third-party clients. The possibility of this strategy materializing is further underscored by preliminary talks, confirmed by CNBC earlier this month, between Anthropic and Meta regarding leasing AI-related computing capacity.
For the second quarter, financial data provider StreetAccount expects Meta to report 3.61 billion daily active people (DAP) across its family of applications, with an anticipated average revenue per person of $16.65.
The company’s Reality Labs division, responsible for virtual reality, augmented reality, and AI-powered wearable devices like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, is projected to incur a loss of $5.07 billion on revenue of $423.4 million for the quarter, according to StreetAccount.
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