According to TechCrunch, Mark Zuckerberg told investors that Meta users will start seeing new AI models and products in a matter of months, following a 2025 foundation rebuild. He specifically highlighted “agentic shopping tools” as a key focus, designed to help users find products from Meta’s business catalog. This push is backed by a staggering financial commitment, with Meta anticipating capital expenditures to jump to between $115 billion and $135 billion in 2026, up from $72 billion in 2025. The company attributes this spending increase to its “Meta Superintelligence Labs” efforts and core business. While massive, this figure is still reportedly short of a longer-term projection of $600 billion in infrastructure spending through 2028.
The Personal Data Advantage
Here’s the thing: everyone’s building AI shopping agents. Google and OpenAI are on it, with partners like Stripe already in the mix. So why does Zuckerberg think Meta has a shot? It all comes down to context. He basically argued that the real value of an AI agent isn’t just its raw intelligence, but its deep understanding of you—your history, interests, and relationships. And Meta, love it or hate it, sits on a mountain of that personal context. It’s a classic Zuckerberg move: frame the company’s most controversial asset (your data) as its ultimate competitive moat. The recent acquisition of agent developer Manus fits right into this plan, giving them more tech to integrate that personal data into a useful assistant.
The $100+ Billion Question
Now, let’s talk about that eye-watering capex number. Spending $115-135 billion in a single year is an almost incomprehensible bet. Investors have been rightfully skeptical, constantly asking how this translates to revenue. Zuckerberg’s answer? Agentic commerce. He’s telegraphing that the path to monetization runs through turning Facebook and Instagram into the world’s most personalized shopping mall, where an AI does the browsing for you. But it’s a huge gamble. That’s a lot of money to spend before proving people even want to shop that way. Can an AI agent really understand style, nuance, and unspoken need better than a scroll through Instagram already does? I’m not convinced yet.
A 2026 Reckoning
So what’s the trajectory? 2026 is shaping up to be a make-or-break year for Meta’s AI vision. They’ve spent years and hundreds of billions rebuilding infrastructure. Now they have to ship. The “coming months” will give us the first look at these new models and shopping tools. The success or failure of those early products will determine if that insane spending looks like visionary investment or catastrophic waste. One thing’s for sure: the pressure is on. As detailed in their earnings release and discussed on the investor call, the financial commitment is locked in. Now we see if the grand “personal superintelligence” vision, which reportedly requires that $600 billion long-term spend, starts to feel real to users—or just remains a very expensive line item on a spreadsheet.
