Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) and BlackRock Inc (NYSE:BLK) have formed a joint venture to develop and operate a large-scale artificial intelligence data center campus in El Paso, Texas, as Meta looks to expand the infrastructure supporting its AI ambitions.
The venture will develop and own the data center campus, which is currently under construction and is expected to provide 1 gigawatt of compute capacity when it begins coming online in 2028. The project represents a total development cost of approximately $14 billion, including buildings and long-lived power, cooling and connectivity infrastructure.
Under the agreement, funds managed by BlackRock will own an 80% interest in the venture, while Meta will retain a 20% stake. The companies will fund their respective portions of the development costs, with BlackRock making an initial cash contribution of approximately $4.9 billion and Meta contributing land and construction-in-progress ****** ets valued at about $2.3 billion.
Meta will lease the entire campus from the venture and will remain the sole occupant upon completion. The company will provide construction management, administrative and property management services for the facility.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the partnership would allow the company to scale its AI infrastructure efforts more quickly.

#meta #venture #scale #data

In a week where an AI model went rogue and broke out of a secure test environment—and in a year where seemingly all we're hearing is how AI can displace large swaths of the workforce—it may come as a surprise when one of the tech's most prominent voices is pushing an optimistic view of the tech, joining the many in his field who have recently walked back comments of how it could negatively impact workers.
"As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote as the caption to a short video on Thursday, harkening back to the company's early years of tech optimism.
"Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the ****** you want, but we're betting on people, and we like those odds," the voiceover in the video said.
The video featured montages of people using Instagram, Whatsapp, FaceBook and Meta's Ray-Ban glasses to film touching moments and connect with loved ones, with the backdrop of concerts and snowboarding and laughing children set to calm music as the voiceover framed Meta's AI efforts as doubling down on betting on people, just like the company did 22 years ago with FaceBook.
Marketing experts told Fortune that the Meta video's reliance on nostalgic imagery seemed like a way to redirect attention from AI concerns and to buffer against growing AI fears.

#like #we 're #back #years

Due to Meta Platforms' (NASDAQ: META) plans to spend massive sums on artificial intelligence infrastructure, its shares have fallen substantially from the 52-week high of $796.25 they reached last August. But the stock's trajectory has changed in recent days, edging up past $600.
The catalyst for Wall Street's renewed optimism is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to turn the company's expensive AI infrastructure into a cloud computing business that sells access to its artificial intelligence models. This will provide it with a new revenue stream and diversify Meta beyond its advertising-fueled social media foundation.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
That new direction could become a key sales driver, as it has been for other tech ******* ans that pursued cloud computing, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and notably, Meta's chief rival in digital advertising, Google parent Alphabet. But is Meta joining this cadre too late, or does its AI opportunity change the dynamics of its investment thesis?
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are the world's top three providers of cloud computing capacity, demonstrating that this market is a natural fit for tech businesses already pouring money into data center infrastructure. Meta -- the fourth of the big hyperscalers -- finally throwing its hat into the ring makes sense, especially since it plans to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures this year, up substantially from 2025's $72.2 billion.

#NVIDIA #signal #infrastructure #Microsoft

It's been a tumultuous year for Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) investors. Despite the company's strong underlying ad revenue and user engagement metrics, the stock has been under meaningful pressure.
While the stock at one point cratered by as much as 20%, shares are now down just 2% year to date -- showing some degree of resilience as capital continues rotating toward companies that are viewed as clearer artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure winners. With its next earnings reported scheduled for July 29, I predict Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will take that opportunity to announce a major strategic shift that could reframe Meta's role in the AI economy.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Meta's stock has been under pressure this year for one reason: the scale of its AI investments. The company is deploying unprecedented sums to build data centers, design custom silicon, and procure GPU clusters to support its AI initiatives.
Those capital expenditures have compressed its free cash flow in the near term. Investors are growing increasingly concerned about the potential timeline for Meta to deliver meaningful returns on this capital, especially amid questions about how AI will be monetized across the broader tech sector.

#year #Stock #flashing

Investors seem to have forgotten that Meta's (META) ambitious AI capital expenditures drilled the stock when the company reported first quarter earnings in April.
And there are two reasons why sentiments have turned around since then.
Quick insight: The bulls are circling Meta ahead of its July 29 earnings report, in part because of potential profit upside from massive cost cuts.
"With 10% workforce reduction in May and job postings down 49% quarter over quarter in 2Q, we expect EPS upside," BofA ******* yst Justin Post said in a note.
The other component is the potential for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to signal strong demand for 2027, helped by a new tie-up with Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) on compute.

#quarter #meta #july #bofa

Since Meta Platforms' (META) founding by Mark Zuckerberg and four of his Harvard classmates in 2004, the company has built a dominant social media ecosystem comprising Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads, complemented by its Reality Labs hardware division. Moving beyond its origins in social networking, the enterprise has transformed into a comprehensive artificial intelligence leader, utilizing its massive data resources to fuel AI-driven advertising, advanced AI agents, and custom hardware initiatives via its growing Meta Superintelligence Labs.
META shares are currently trading significantly under their 52-week peak of $796.25 from Aug. 15, 2025, while holding above the 52-week low of $520.26 set on March 27, 2026. Year-to-date (YTD), the stock has declined by roughly 3%, bringing its market capitalization to about $1.6 trillion.
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#meta #Stock #zuckerberg

Artificial intelligence has been the leading story of Meta Platforms (META), with Meta receiving praise (and critique) from the market for allocating up to $145 billion in capital expenditures to invest in building AI infrastructure. That story received new fodder for the bears last week when CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented during an internal town hall that AI agent development of Meta hasn't been moving "in the way we expected" over the past four months.
That comment came just a few days after the news that Meta intends to rent extra AI computing capacity through the cloud business, raising questions on whether AI infrastructure investments are outpacing the demand. Nevertheless, the company keeps generating impressive cash flow through its highly profitable advertising business, thus having much more financial flexibility compared to most of its rivals focused on developing AI infrastructure.
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META shares have dropped 12% year to date as Zuckerberg admits AI development
Meta cut 8,000 employees targeting integrity, cybersecurity, and Reality Labs while shielding AI infrastructure and monetization teams from layoffs.
Meta employee morale has cratered, with Blind ratings down 25% and median total compensation dropping nearly $30,000, as workers feel they're training their own replacements.
Act now: the **** yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
At an internal Meta town hall on July 2, 2026, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that AI agent development over the prior four months "hasn't really accelerated in the way that we expected," per a recording heard by Reuters. He added that the company's reorganization was not as "clean" as planned and that its bets on the new structure "haven't come to fruition yet," though he expects meaningful benefits within three to six months.

At a Meta town hall, Zuckerberg admitted AI hasn't accelerated as expected, directly challenging OpenAI's $1 trillion IPO thesis.
OpenAI lost $38.5 billion in 2025 on $13 billion in revenue and won't reach profitability until 2029, yet Altman holds the $1 trillion target.
OECD data shows 14% of US college students read at or below a 10-year-old's level, nearly double the international average.
Act now: the ******* yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Sam Altman wants Wall Street to value OpenAI at $1 trillion. Meanwhile, 14% of US college students are reading at or below the level of a 10-year-old, according to the OECD. Those two facts, sitting side by side, may explain why the most anticipated technology IPO in a generation just got pushed into 2027.

The market is focused these days on the immense amount of capital flooding the artificial intelligence (AI) build-out. The hyperscalers are getting all the attention as they embark on an extraordinary investment cycle.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is one such business. The dominant social media platform, which has historically posted huge profits and free cash flow, plans to spend $125 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures (capex) in 2026, mostly for AI infrastructure. That upper bound is about double the $72 billion figure from last year.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Investors are probably wondering why Meta is transitioning from a capital-light business to a capital-intensive one. There might only be one reason.
On the Q1 2025 earnings call, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company has five major opportunities related to the AI revolution. The list includes better recommendations and content, business messaging, the Meta AI ***** istant, and AI devices. But perhaps the most important priority is leveraging AI to improve advertising capabilities.

By Katie Paul and Courtney Rozen
NEW YORK, July 2 (Reuters) - Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged shortcomings in the company's sweeping restructuring at an internal town hall on Thursday, saying the systems known as AI agents ‌had not progressed as quickly as he had expected, according to a recording heard by Reuters.
Zuckerberg added that ‌a company reorganization that included major job cuts was not as "clean" as it could have been and that executives had miscalculated on the timing of the changes.
Zuckerberg and other Meta executives have been seeking to moderate some of the organizational changes introduced earlier this year, without fundamentally changing course. The company laid off about 10% of its global workforce and reassigned roughly 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams in May, moves that prompted employee pushback and raised concerns about morale.
The changes were part of a broader restructuring aimed at funding costly investments in artificial intelligence ‌infrastructure and positioning Meta to capitalize on ⁠efficiency gains from AI-assisted work. Zuckerberg told employees in May that he did not expect further companywide layoffs this year, though some workers were skeptical.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is one of the best growth stocks to buy according to billionaire Dan Loeb. On June 23, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration has been pressing Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) to voluntarily submit its AI models for government security reviews. This makes Meta the only major US AI company that has yet to agree to the process, the Times noted.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The Times noted that the review framework itself was formalized on June 2, when President Trump signed an executive order establishing a voluntary system under which AI developers submit their most powerful frontier AI models to the federal government for up to 30 days of evaluation before public release. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) runs the reviews, with input from the NSA, CISA, and NIST. The full review process is expected to be operational by the end of July.
According to the Times report, every other major U.S. AI developer, including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and xAI, has already signed on. It added that Meta is the only holdout, yet its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, sits on the administration's AI advisory committee.
Asked for comment, Francis Brennan, a Meta spokesman, told the Times that the company shares "the administration's goal of advancing U.S. leadership on robust and secure frontier AI." He added that the company is "working through the details" and that they "hope to sign the agreement soon."

By Ashwin Manikandan and Abinaya V
June 22 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms will invest $900 million in Indian fintech startup CRED, valuing it at $4.5 billion, ‌while tapping CRED's founder Kunal Shah to head WhatsApp globally, the ‌companies said on Monday.
India is WhatsApp's largest market, with more than 500 million users, and the platform is expanding beyond messaging into payments and business services in the country.
Will Cathcart, the current head of WhatsApp, will move to a new role within Meta after seven years leading the messaging service, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said ‌in a Facebook post. Shah, ⁠who founded CRED in 2018, confirmed the announcement.
Meta's investment is one of the largest into India's financial technology sector in ⁠recent years. The valuation is higher than the $3.5 billion in CRED's previous funding round in 2025, but lower than its peak of $6.4 billion in 2022.

Dana White has dragged the Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg fight back into the spotlight by insisting it was much closer to reality than fans thought.
The UFC boss said the talks went far beyond social media noise, with both billionaires involved in detailed discussions over money, venue and fight logistics.
For a matchup many treated like a meme, the numbers were serious.
A Happy Punch post shared White's comments about the failed Musk-Zuckerberg fight and the huge cost of staging it at Rome's Colosseum.
White said: "That was real. I was literally in my backyard for 2 weeks negotiating that fight. Those two were gonna put up the money."

We just covered Billionaire Dan Loeb Pivots to AI and Sells Old Economy Stocks: His Top 7 AI Picks. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) ranks #2 (see Billionaire Dan Loeb's Top 5 AI Stock Picks).
Billionaire Dan Loeb's Stake: 90,000 Shares Valued at Approximately $51.49 Million (NEW position)
Billionaire Dan Loeb opened a new position in Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) in the first quarter, buying 90,000 shares of the social media giant. The stock is down about 15% over the past year as the market awaits ROI on Zuckerberg's eye-popping AI spending spree.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) plans to spend at least $600 billion on AI infrastructure through 2028, which is spooking investors who fear the returns won't justify the cost. But bulls believe this investment will pay off because Meta is deploying AI directly into its core business rather than into speculative new ventures.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is using AI to improve its algorithm to increase engagement, which is showing impact in its ads business. The average price per ad grew 12% year-over-year in Q1 2026, nearly double the 6% growth seen just one quarter earlier.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is admitting to missteps in a newly leaked memo, following the company's significant workforce changes over the past year as it pours billions of dollars into developing artificial intelligence infrastructure.
These changes include Meta's decision last year to axe roughly 3,600 jobs after Zuckerberg warned employees in a memo that he had decided to "raise the bar on performance."
Meta continued to cut jobs this year as it doubled down on its artificial intelligence investments. In January, the company laid off about 1,000 employees in its Reality Labs division after the department incurred $73 billion in losses since 2021.
By March, it had pink-slipped several hundred employees across multiple departments, including sales, recruiting, global operations, Facebook, and again, Reality Labs. The following month, it even began tracking employees' computer activity to help build its AI agents, according to a Reuters report.
Most recently, in May, Meta laid off 8,000 employees, which is 10% of its workforce, and pulled the plug on 6,000 open job positions to offset its massive AI investments. Additionally, over 7,000 employees were internally reassigned to roles that focus on AI initiatives.

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Michael Dell got $35.8 billion richer in a single day (1).
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