Meta Platforms has jolted global markets by raising its capital expenditure forecast for next year to as much as $145bn — a sharp jump from the $135bn upper limit it set barely three months ago — while simultaneously shedding thousands of posts. The announcement, which accompanied quarterly earnings showing revenue leaping by almost a third, sent the company’s shares down more than six per cent in after-hours trading, as investors recoiled at the scale of the social‑media giant’s artificial‑intelligence wager.

That wager, viewed from London, is beginning to unnerve even the most tech‑sanguine portfolio managers. Meta’s core advertising business delivered $56.3bn in revenue last quarter, with profits surging 61 per cent, helped by an $8bn tax benefit. Yet the cash generated is being ploughed straight into data centres and AI infrastructure, pushing full‑year 2025 spending to roughly $72bn and setting 2026 on a trajectory that would see outlays almost double the previous year’s figure. For a company whose stock had been flat for the year, the sheer velocity of the commitment has rattled confidence.

The timing is made more delicate by a parallel programme of deep workforce cuts. Only days before lifting its investment guidance, Meta confirmed a “significant” round of redundancies — pegged by Italian analysts at 8,000 roles — that it frames as a reallocation towards AI talent. The same morning, Microsoft revealed it would part with seven per cent of its staff, citing similar reasons. In Rome, commentators have coined the phrase “AI washing” to describe a trend in which large tech firms invoke artificial intelligence as a respectable cover for headcount reduction, even when balance sheets remain robust.

Looking from Washington and Brussels, the regulatory horizon adds a further layer of uncertainty. Meta’s own filing warns that legal and regulatory moves in the European Union and the United States — notably around child safety on social media — “could materially affect our business and financial results”. Arab‑world business dailies underline that the company is simultaneously contending with slowing digital‑advertising sentiment in some emerging markets and a patchy track record in translating AI research into revenue, a fact that makes its breakneck infrastructure build‑out seem, to some analysts in Beirut, more defensive than opportunistic.

The split‑screen moment for Big Tech was sharpened by the simultaneous release of results from Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon. All three displayed clearer lines between their AI investments and top‑line growth, cushioning their share prices. Meta, by contrast, has yet to convince the market that its Muse Spark model — developed by the team behind the Scale AI acquisition, which cost $14.3bn — can power the same kind of commercial acceleration. Wall Street, though still broadly bullish on the company’s long‑term ad‑technology lead, is quietly fretting that the spending spree now resembles an arms race in which the tactical goal has become indistinguishable from the strategic one.

Looking ahead, the central question is whether Meta’s enormous capital push will generate a commensurate return before the regulatory and macroeconomic climate tightens further. The company is betting that integrating generative AI across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp will unlock a new advertising tier and justify the cloud‑computing bills. But with all four tech majors set to spend over $650bn on AI this year alone, the margin for error is narrowing. If growth disappoints or if Brussels levies fines that dent the advertising engine, the very staff reductions that now alarm labour‑rights groups may come to be seen as merely the opening move in a longer and more painful recalibration.