THE SHORT VERSION
● Revenue — $64.6 billion, up 26% year over year
● Quarterly capex — $34.91 billion
● 2026 capex guidance — $135 to $145 billion
● Free cash flow — negative $2.12 billion
Meta reported Q3 revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26% year over year, with net income of $9.86 billion after a $9.89 billion legal charge. Capital expenditure was $34.91 billion for the quarter, and full-year 2026 guidance is $135 to $145 billion.
The line that matters is free cash flow of negative $2.12 billion. A company growing revenue 26% and earning nearly $10 billion in quarterly net income is nonetheless consuming cash, because the AI infrastructure build is larger than the profit it generates. Separately, Judge Francis Mathew ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties under New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act; Meta disputes the ruling and plans to appeal, and that is a court-ordered penalty rather than money collected.
Read the capex guidance next to Anthropic's $450 billion in cloud obligations and Flapping Airplanes raising $1 billion to question whether any of it is necessary. The entire sector is making the same bet at once, financed in four different ways, and nobody has yet shown that the compute curve has to keep bending upward.
Sources
TechStartups