Is Meta’s AI capex shock a reset or the best entry point in years?

Meta just delivered what most companies can only dream of: revenue up more than 20% for 2025, record profits and a stock price that has roughly tripled off the 2022 lows, with the core Family of Apps franchise still throwing off operating margins around 41%. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg has told investors to brace for a completely different spending profile, guiding 2026 capital expenditures to an eye watering 115–135 billion dollars, almost double last year’s 72 billion and several times what the company poured into Reality Labs over an entire decade.

Anyone looking at the stock after that kind of run has to hold two ideas in their head at once. On one side sits a dominant, cash generative advertising machine that still earns tech leading margins and funds everything else; on the other is an AI and hardware investment program on a scale that recalls the original metaverse push, layered on top of more than 80 billion dollars in cumulative losses at Reality Labs that prove Meta is…