Mark Zuckerberg reports Meta's second-quarter results and highlights aggressive investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Mark Zuckerberg reported that Meta's second-quarter results showed a revenue of $60.8 billion and earnings per share of $6.18. While the company beat revenue expectations, it missed the midpoint for its third-quarter revenue outlook and saw a significant drop in free cash flow to $784 million, down from $8.55 billion a year prior. This decline was primarily driven by heavy spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, including a narrowed capital expenditure range of $130 billion to $145 billion for the year. Mark Zuckerberg noted that a significant portion of compute power is being directed toward training models and delivering personal agents. To compete with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta debuted the Muse Spark 1.1 model with a pricing scheme that significantly undercuts its competitors. Additionally, the company announced a venture with BlackRock to build a $14 billion data center in Texas. Despite the lower free cash flow, Meta's Reality Labs unit performed better than expected, recording a loss of $4.6 billion against a projected loss of $5.07 billion.