Meta

Meta's relationship with the news publishing industry shifted from adversarial traffic dependency to formal licensing when News Corp CEO Robert Thomson confirmed a licensing deal with Meta alongside OpenAI and an anticipated $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement, making Meta one of three major AI companies paying for publisher content at scale. On 27 May 2026, Meta took its first structural step away from a purely ad-funded model by launching Meta One subscription tiers globally: $7.99/month (Plus) and $19.99/month (Premium) for expanded compute, alongside $3.99 Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus plans. Creator and business tiers from $14.99 to $49.99 are under test in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand, Bangladesh and other markets. The move is the first hybrid paid-and-ad model in Meta's history and positions its AI products, including Meta AI, the assistant embedded across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as premium consumer goods. Under EU AI Act Article 50, Meta's platforms are the primary distribution surface for AI-generated media content at consumer scale; synthetic or AI-manipulated content served through Facebook, Instagram and Reels must carry disclosures from August 2026. On 7 July 2026, Meta Superintelligence Labs previewed Muse Video, its first AI video-generation model, alongside a stablemate image model, Muse Image; Muse Video generates short clips with native synchronised audio on the same pretraining base, ranks third on the Arena text-to-video leaderboard, and remains preview-only, with Meta itself flagging open gaps in audio-video sync and physically accurate fast motion. It gives Meta a nascent generative-video product to route through the same Article 50 disclosure regime that already governs its image and text AI output.

Meta is one of four US hyperscalers whose combined Q1 2026 capital expenditure reached $110.75 billion, the largest single-quarter infrastructure spend in corporate history. Its 2026 capex guidance sits at $125-145 billion, raised twice in three months, with data centres and AI infrastructure absorbing the majority of that budget. behind-the-meter gas generation has been part of that buildout, placing Meta's facilities within scope of the DOE Section 202(c) curtailment order of 18 May 2026, which granted PJM authority to switch off data centres with BTM backup during heat events.

Meta's response to BTM gas curtailment risk is to accelerate firmed non-gas procurement. On 22 May 2026 Meta signed an agreement with Enbridge for a 365 MW solar and 200 MW battery storage project in Wyoming at a cost of $1.2 billion, entering service by end-2027, its largest single renewable procurement to date. Simultaneously, XGS Energy is developing a 150 MW enhanced-geothermal project in New Mexico with Meta as anchor customer and Baker Hughes as development partner, a technology that delivers 24/7 carbon-free power without relying on natural reservoirs. Together the two deals ADD 515 MW of firmed renewable capacity, diversifying Meta's power mix away from gas at a moment of regulatory pressure.