Breaking Update: Here’s a clear explanation of the latest developments related to Breaking News:Meta to nearly double its investment in AI in 2026 as Mark Zuckerberg looks to build a ‘personal superintelligence’– What Just Happened and why it matters right now.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is looking to nearly double the company’s investment in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in 2026.
In its Q4 earnings report released on Wednesday, Meta revealed that its capital expenditure on AI for 2026 would be between $115 and $135 billion, nearly twice of what the company spent on the same last year when it revamped its AI unit.
“As we plan for the future, we will continue to invest very significantly in infrastructure to train leading models and deliver personal super intelligence to billions of people and businesses around the world,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying by CNBC during the earnings call.
The “infrastructure” cited by Zuckerberg during the earnings call refers to Meta’s ambitious data centre projects that will anchor both its current and future AI projects.
The Meta CEO also stressed that 2026 would be major year for AI, with the company’s investments aimed at supporting his mission for creating a “personal super intelligence,” which he announced last year.
AI roadmap for 2026
That said, Zuckerberg did not reveal whether Meta will launch new AI products, or how its AI products could help bolster revenue generation.
“I mean, we’re going to roll out new products over the course of the year. I think the important thing is, we’re not just launching one thing, and we’re building a lot of things,” the Meta CEO was quoted as saying on the earnings call.
While Zuckerberg did not name any new products on the call, CNBC reported that Meta’s TBD AI unit, under the leadership of former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, has been testing a new AI model code-named Avocado, which is intended to be the successor to Meta’s Llama family of AI models.
As if alluding to the same, the Meta CEO said on Wednesday, “I expect our first models will be good but, more importantly, will show the rapid trajectory that we’re on. And then I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the year as we continue to release new models.”
Zuckerberg looks to ‘shape the future’ of AI
Asked on the earnings call about why Meta needed to develop its own AI model, Zuckerberg stressed that the firm was a “deep technology company”.
Asserting that Meta could not risk being “constrained to what others in the ecosystem are building”, Zuckerberg said that having its own model would allow the company to “shape the future of these [AI] products”.
The ‘personal superintelligence’ project
Zuckerberg’s comments on Wednesday back up the vision outlined by the Meta CEO in July last year, when he announced the “personal superintelligence” project.
Differentiating Meta’s vision from that of other players in the AI industry, Zuckerberg said that his company was looking at “personal empowerment” via AI rather than mere automatic and efficiency gains.
“I am extremely optimistic that superintelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress. But perhaps even more important is that superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose,” the Meta CEO wrote in a letter published in the public domain.
“This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output,” he said, adding, “The intersection of technology and how people live is Meta’s focus, and this will only become more important in the future.”