Meta revenue hits $64.6 billion but $10 billion settlement halves margin

Meta's third-quarter results land in a week when the company also faced a $25 billion penalty order from a New Mexico judge over the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. That order, which Meta plans to appeal, followed a jury finding of more than 43 million violations. The youth-safety settlement and the New Mexico order together show that legal liabilities from Meta's past and present products are now large enough to swing quarterly profits.

On the AI side, Meta's Superintelligence Labs launched its first frontier model, Muse Wonder, to the public a week before earnings. The company's capital expenditures jumped to $34.9 billion from $19.4 billion a year ago, and it slightly tweaked full-year capex guidance to $135 billion to $145 billion. Analyst Melissa Otto of S&P Global noted that consensus capex for 2026 had risen more than $14 billion since April to about $140 billion, almost double 2025, and that investors continue to want clarity on how that spending will translate into shareholder returns.

Free cash flow of negative $2.1 billion, compared to $10.6 billion a year ago, highlights how the AI buildout is consuming cash even as revenue grows. The broader tech infrastructure spending picture, per Otto, shows capex expected to reach $790 billion in 2026 and $1.2 trillion in 2027.