Meta Plans to Spend as Much as $65B in 'Defining Year for AI' Says Zuckerberg

Capital Expenditure and AI Investment - Meta Platforms plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures this year, up from an estimated $38 billion to $40 billion in 2024, as the company expands its artificial intelligence efforts [2][5] - The company aims to build an AI data center "so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," with 1 gigawatt of computing power expected to be online in 2025 and over 1.3 million GPU chips by the end of that year [3][5] Stock Performance and Market Reaction - Meta's stock price rose 1.7% on Friday to close at an all-time high of $647.49, following the announcement of increased capital expenditures and AI expansion [2] - The shares have gained close to 65% over the past 12 months, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company's strategic direction [2][5] AI Development and Future Plans - Meta expects its AI to serve more than 1 billion people, powered by the Llama 4 large language model, which is currently in development and set for smaller model launches early this year [4][5] - Analysts at JPMorgan believe Meta AI functionality will ramp up with Llama 4 this year, with features similar to OpenAI's Operator AI agent [5] Industry Context - The announcement comes shortly after the $500 billion AI project Stargate was announced by President Donald Trump, which drove several related AI and nuclear energy stocks higher [4]