The spending increase reflects Meta's strategy of building AI capacity years before demand fully materializes. That distinction has become increasingly important as investors compare Meta with rivals that already generate substantial revenue from AI infrastructure. Chief Financial Officer Susan Li echoed that view, telling analysts that AI computing capacity remains constrained across the industry after years of underinvestment. In the meantime, Meta is accelerating construction of some of the largest AI data centers in the industry. Unlike those rivals, however, Meta enters the AI infrastructure race without a large cloud-computing business that can immediately monetize spare capacity.