Meta Platforms, Inc.

Q2 2026 total revenue was $60.8 billion, up 28% year over year, and Family of Apps revenue was $60.4 billion, up 28%; ad revenue was $59.4 billion, up 27% (26% constant currency). Reality Labs revenue was $431 million, up 16%. GAAP operating income was $18.8 billion, down 8% year over year, with a 31% operating margin; net income was $15.8 billion, or $6.18 per share. Q2 expenses were $42 billion, up 55%, including $2.4 billion of legal charges and $1.2 billion of severance expenses. Capex, including finance lease principal, was $31.1 billion; free cash flow was $784 million; cash and marketable securities were $90.3 billion and debt was $83.7 billion. For Q3 2026, Meta guided total revenue to $61 billion to $64 billion, assuming a roughly 1% FX headwind. Full-year 2026 total expenses are now expected to be $165 billion to $169 billion, and 2026 capex is expected to be $130 billion to $145 billion. Meta said it continues to expect full-year operating income above 2025 levels and sees 2026 tax rate at 15% to 17% for the remaining quarters.

Mark Zuckerberg framed the quarter as evidence that Meta’s AI investments are already paying off across the core business, especially recommendations and advertising. He highlighted rapid growth in Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Meta AI usage, and the early strength of new glasses, while positioning personal agents, business agents, APIs, and compute as the next major revenue opportunities. His tone was highly confident and expansionary, with repeated emphasis that Meta is building a full-stack AI platform and is willing to invest aggressively for long-term scale.

Susan Li emphasized that the quarter’s revenue growth was broad-based, with Family of Apps ad revenue up 27% and other revenue reaching $1 billion for the first time. She pointed to better ad impressions, higher average price per ad, and AI-driven performance gains, including a 1% increase in app event conversions on Instagram and an 8.3% increase in ad clicks plus a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook. On the cost side, she cited $42 billion of expenses, $31.1 billion of capex, $784 million of free cash flow, and the impact of $2.4 billion in legal charges and $1.2 billion of severance. She also said Meta is raising the low end of its expense outlook, keeping capex elevated, and continuing to use debt and partnerships like BlackRock to fund long-duration infrastructure.

Analysts pressed on which AI and enterprise opportunities could scale first, how much capacity should be built for 2027 and beyond, and how Meta thinks about funding the buildout. Zuckerberg said Meta expects meaningful growth across core ads, consumer products, APIs, business agents, and even compute sales, but he believes selling intelligence will ultimately carry higher margins than selling raw compute. Li said there is no specific 2027 capex outlook yet and that planning remains highly dynamic. Questions on open source and frontier models drew a firm answer from Zuckerberg: Meta does not believe open-weight models are strong enough to replace frontier models, and he said Meta wants sovereignty over its own model stack while still supporting a mix of open and closed releases.