Mark Zuckerberg tells investors why Meta is selling compute and still buying more — as capex guidance rises to $130B

Mark Zuckerberg tells investors why Meta is selling compute and still buying more — as capex guidance rises to $130B Chris Morris Tue, August 4, 2026 at 1:30 PM GMT+2 4 min read META AMD Meta's relationship with compute is an unusual one. On the one hand, the company has held talks with AI rival Anthropic about leasing some of its internal computing power and begun to develop plans for a cloud infrastructure business to compete with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. On the other hand, the company does purchase computing capacity from companies like AMD and Crusoe .

That's causing some confusion among investors and analysts. Must Read Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake.   Here's what it is and 3 simple steps to fix it ASAP Millionaires under 43 hold only 25% of their wealth in stocks.

Here's where their money is actually going JPMorgan's Douglas Anmuth looked for some clarity on the strategy last week on the company's most recent quarterly earnings call. Zuckerberg's reply offered a window into the company's thinking. "The high-level observation is that there's just nowhere near enough compute for all the demand," he said.

"We are getting a large number of offers for the compute that we have, but also we have a lot of internal uses that we think are going to be quite valuable. " What it comes down to, Zuckerberg explained, is Meta plans to monetize the company's current compute in the short term, while simultaneously investing in the future. In his eyes, there's plenty to go around.

"It would be foolish to basically just sell all of the compute and take a short-term profit," he said. Instead, said Zuckerberg, Meta has chosen to use a portion of its capital to build out compute, knowing it can monetize it when it makes sense. The data center push Zuckerberg doesn't think the demand for compute is going to slow down anytime soon.

That's why, he said, Meta is continuing its push to create a growing number of data centers. The company is in the process of building 27 data centers across the U. S.

That has resulted in a shortage of construction workers who are qualified to set up the infrastructure in those buildings. To combat that, Meta unveiled the LevelUp program a little over three months ago. That program is a multi-year partnership with real estate and infrastructure services firm CBRE, which Meta says "provides free, rapid training to turn thousands of Americans with no prior experience.

" "We basically see a very large demand for all of this, and want to go maximize the opportunity to build out all of these different businesses," Zuckerberg told investors. Story Continues Read More: Forget Florida — this is why these two unexpected states are the new retirement hot spots Big spending equals worried investors Meta raised the lower end of its guidance for 2026 capital expenditures (capex) to $130 billion from $125 billion. And it could swell up to $145 billion, the company said.

That's a lot, and investors are getting nervous about when the company will see returns on that sort of spending. Capex spending for the quarter reached $31. 1 billion, which was basically equal to operating cash flow.

That caused Meta's stock to tumble after its earnings report, though its stock price has recovered in the days since. What To Read Next The tax breaks in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' expire after 2028 — and experts say most people won't act in time. What to do before the window closes Here's the average income of Americans by age in 2026.

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This article originally appeared on Moneywise. com under the title: Mark Zuckerberg tells investors why Meta is selling compute and still buying more — as capex guidance rises to $130B This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.