Meta’s stock sinks as earnings disappoint and capex guidance balloons to $145 billion

Meta Platforms just reminded Wall Street that building the future of AI doesn’t come cheap. The company posted Q2 2026 earnings per share of $6.18, badly missing the $7.14 consensus estimate, and then raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance for good measure. Shares dropped nearly 8% in after-hours trading. The revenue picture was fine, technically. Meta brought in $60.8 billion for the quarter, edging past the $60.2 billion analysts had penciled in. Advertising revenue hit $59.3 billion, topping the $59.07 billion expectation. The AI spending spree intensifies Meta bumped its full-year 2026 capex guidance to $135-145 billion, up from the $125-145 billion range it had set earlier this year. That’s not a subtle adjustment. The low end of the range jumped $10 billion in a single quarter. In Q1 2026, the company had already reported capex of $19.84 billion. Now it’s signaling even more aggressive spending through the rest of the year, almost entirely directed toward data centers and AI infrastructure. The day before earnings dropped, Meta announced a partnership with BlackRock to build a $14 billion data center in Texas. The facility is expected to deliver 1 gigawatt of capac...