Meta spent $34.91 billion on capital expenditures in the third quarter, up from $31.08 billion in the second, and narrowed its full-year forecast to $135-145 billion from the previous $130-145 billion range. The midpoint of the new guidance sits at $140 billion, effectively in line with the $139.79 billion consensus analysts were already modeling. Shares rose 4.12% after hours, a marked contrast to the 10% drop last quarter when an earnings miss coincided with the prior capex increase.
The spending trajectory
The quarterly step-up was telegraphed. On the "Cheeky Pint" podcast earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg said he had been prepared to commit up to $200 billion to AI infrastructure before the models proved out. The actual run rate is tracking below that ceiling, but the $34.91 billion quarterly pace annualizes to roughly $140 billion, suggesting the narrowed range reflects execution rather than retrenchment. Meta's chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, has been posting memes of Muse's mascot while the infrastructure build-out continues.
The new variable
Muse is the variable that did not exist in prior cycles. The AI assistant has reached 2 million daily users and 3 million downloads since its launch, scaling quickly on the App Store. Users told Business Insider they are using it to plan trips and study for exams. At the September Connect keynote, Zuckerberg described a transaction-based model: Muse is free for a large token allowance, with Meta taking a small fee on commerce that flows through the assistant. That is a revenue line attached directly to the compute spend, which is a cleaner argument than the engagement-to-advertising funnel investors have been asked to underwrite for years.
What the market is pricing
The after-hours move suggests the market is treating Muse as a partial offset to capex anxiety, or at least a reason to delay the next sell-the-news reaction. The narrowed range removes the lower-bound ambiguity that allowed bears to model $130 billion, but it also caps the upside surprise at $145 billion. With the consensus figure already embedded, the next inflection point is whether Muse's transaction volume can produce revenue visible enough to appear in the segment breakdown, or whether the assistant remains a feature subsidized by the family of apps.