Meta Q4: Zuckerberg bets the house on "Personal Superintelligence" (and Wall Street loves it)

Key topics:Meta’s Q4 surge driven by massive AI and AGI infrastructure investmentWall Street backs Zuckerberg’s “personal superintelligence” strategyStrong ad growth offsets soaring capex and margin pressure.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Alec Hogg.There was a time, not so long ago, when Mark Zuckerberg’s heavy spending sent investors running for the hills. Remember 2022? The "Metaverse" pivot wiped hundreds of billions off the company’s value.Fast forward to January 2026, and the tune has changed completely. The Zuck is back. And Wall Street is falling in love with him again.Last night Meta released its Q4 2025 results, and despite announcing an eye-watering increase in capital expenditure (capex), the stock soared hitting $740 in after market trade ($668 pre results release). The difference? This time, the spending isn’t on cartoon avatars without legs. It’s on the infrastructure of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)..The Numbers: A Revenue Machine.Meta’s core advertising engine is purring. The company reported Q4 revenue of $59.9 billion, a 24% year-on-year increase - well above the ‘exponential growth’ barrier - which beat the $58.35 billion consensus. Getting above the Street’s targets is super important nowadays. So Earnings per share at $8.88, an 11% beat, ticked another key box.But the jaw-dropper was the guidance. Meta announced it expects to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on capex in 2026. To give you some perspective, that is roughly one third of South Africa’s GDP. This money is going directly into data centers, custom silicon, and the energy required to train Llama 5 and its successors..Context: The "Superintelligence" Era.Zuckerberg’s commentary was bold. He spoke of 2026 as the year Meta advances "personal superintelligence" for every user. The company sees a future where every one of its 3.58 billion daily users has an AI agent that knows them, helps them, and—crucially for shareholders—monetises them.Unlike the Metaverse gamble, the AI bet is already showing returns. Meta noted that AI-driven algorithms have increased ad impressions by 18% and improved ad pricing by 6%. The "Year of Efficiency" is technically over, replaced by what appears to be the "Decade of Deployment."Operating margins did compress slightly to 41% (down from 48% a year ago) due to a 40% jump in costs, but the sheer scale of revenue growth masked the pain..Market Reaction.This was the surprise of the earnings season. In previous years, a capex hike of this magnitude would have sent the stock crashing. Instead, Meta shares surged in aftermarket trading.Why? Because Wall Street has bought into the AI arms race. They see Meta’s open-source Llama models becoming the standard, and they trust Zuckerberg’s track record of crushing competition through sheer engineering brute force. The market is effectively saying: "Spend what you need to win.".Bottom Line.Meta is effectively morphing into a capital-intensive infrastructure company disguised as a social network. The risks are high—regulatory scrutiny is never far away—but the cash flow generation is undeniable. For BizNews portfolio watchers, Meta remains a conviction hold. Zuckerberg is playing for keeps, and right now, he is winning.

Meta Q4: Zuckerberg bets the house on "Personal Superintelligence" (and Wall Street loves it)

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