Meta

Meta raised its 2026 AI capital-expenditure guidance to $125bn-$145bn on 29 April 2026, the second increase in three months, while confirming that roughly 8,000 of the 16,000 job cuts flagged in March would begin that May; multiyear infrastructure contracts committed a further $107bn in the same quarter .

That single-quarter jump in locked-in spending makes Meta's infrastructure build effectively irreversible: years of capital are committed regardless of whether its AI products generate matching revenue on any near-term timeline. Rivals moved the same way days later, with Alphabet lifting its own 2026 guidance to $205bn on 22 July .

Meta began cutting roughly 16,000 jobs, more than a fifth of its workforce, after plans surfaced on 13 March 2026 alongside capital spending nearly doubling toward $115bn-$135bn .

An internal memo on 19 April confirmed roughly 8,000 of those cuts would fall on engineering, about 10% of that function, scrapping traditional titles in favour of three AI-focused roles: AI builder, AI pod lead and AI org lead . Meta earned $201bn the prior year, cutting from a position of record profit rather than financial stress.

Meta withdrew rival AI assistants' access to WhatsApp's programming interface on 15 October 2025, cutting off Mistral AI, Aleph Alpha and Cohere from distribution on the platform. Brussels used antitrust powers to order that access restored on 9 June 2026, a dispute Meta has tried to settle with a third access offer on 1 June, so far without resolving it .

The standoff sharpens on 2 August 2026, when the EU's AI Office gains full enforcement powers over general-purpose AI providers, the point at which interim DMA measures against Meta are expected to take effect. Brussels has already fined Meta under the DMA once this year over the underlying dispute.