Zuckerberg's AI Manifesto: Meta Gives Away Models, Keeps the Ad Business

On Monday morning, Mark Zuckerberg posted a letter to Meta's newsroom titled "The Future is for Everyone," arguing that superintelligence should not be "centralized and restricted to a few institutions." He framed the stakes plainly: "The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it toward." His answer was to distribute the technology as widely as possible. That same day, Meta released Muse Glimmer, a family of open-weight models small enough to run on a laptop, with an explicit commitment to release the weights of Muse Spark 1.2, the company's most advanced model, so the public could download and use the underlying calculations freely.

The announcement raises a natural question: is Meta giving away billions of dollars in AI development to shareholders' detriment? Zuckerberg's letter suggests not. He argued that superintelligence should not be kept behind closed doors and that "distribution is both the safety plan and the business plan." The strategy hinges on a distinction between what Meta gives away and what it keeps. The models themselves are free, but the surrounding infrastructure—computing power accessed through what Zuckerberg called a "dynamic auction mechanism," along with Meta's advertising system, user base, and proprietary data—remains private. Meta's revenue still comes "almost entirely from advertising." By giving away model weights that carry little revenue potential while retaining control of the ad stack, Meta can present itself as the champion of open AI while protecting its core profit engine.

The bill for this strategy is staggering and accelerating. Meta entered 2026 projecting $115 billion to $135 billion in capital expenditures, raised the range to $125 billion to $145 billion in April, and lifted the floor again in July to $130 billion to $145 billion. Second-quarter capital spending alone reached $31.1 billion, more than half again the $19.8 billion Meta spent in the first quarter. Free cash flow collapsed accordingly, from $12.4 billion in Q1 to $784 million in Q2, with most cash reinvested into the build-out. Second-quarter net income fell 14% year over year to $15.8 billion as total costs surged 55%; the decline also reflected $2.4 billion of legal charges and severance costs tied to May job cuts. Meta paid $1.35 billion in dividends that quarter and repurchased no stock.

So far, advertising has kept pace. Second-quarter revenue grew 28% year over year to $60.8 billion, driven by 14% year-over-year growth in ad impressions and a 12% increase in the average price per ad. Management still expects full-year operating income to exceed 2025's level. But growth is moderating visibly: the second quarter's 28% expansion decelerated from the first quarter's 33%, and third-quarter guidance of $61 billion to $64 billion suggests further slowdown ahead. The market remains skeptical. At about $597 per share as of the article's writing, Meta stock is down about 10% in 2026 and about 25% from its 52-week high. Shares trade at about 18.5 times analysts' earnings expectations for the coming year and about 22 times current earnings—a significant discount to Nvidia, which trades at nearly 34 times earnings. Investors are pricing in the risk that the arithmetic above—costs growing 55% against revenue growing 28%—cannot hold for the years of spending the letter implies are still ahead.