What happened
On John Collison's Cheeky Pint podcast, Zuckerberg and Wang said a 44-minute call and a memo led to Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Meta now expects 2026 capex of $130 billion to $145 billion.
Why it matters
The partnership behind Meta Superintelligence Labs is tied to a capex scale Zuckerberg himself framed as a $100 billion or $200 billion bet, and investors have flinched at each increase, suggesting spending scrutiny may persist.
WHO IT HITSMeta investors and Wall Street analysts tracking capex will likely focus on whether the Muse app's early traction, including 2.5 million downloads in about two weeks, justifies the 2026 spending range of $130 billion to $145 billion.
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The podcast account fills in how Meta's AI effort was rebuilt after Llama 4 landed to a lukewarm reception in April 2025. Zuckerberg reached out to Wang for advice, and the relationship moved quickly from a 44-minute call to a memo and then to Wang leading Meta Superintelligence Labs. The recruiting push that followed was described as "supernova," with Meta paying $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI to bring Wang aboard and reportedly dangling $100 million compensation offers to OpenAI researchers.
The financial stakes were impressed on Wang by Meta's CFO, Susan Li, who warned at an executive gathering in Hawaii that failure would be "very, very bad in financial terms." Meta now expects 2026 capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion, nearly double the $72.2 billion it spent last year. The Muse app launched in the U.S. on Sept. 8 and topped 2.5 million downloads in about two weeks, and Meta followed with Muse Wonder, the lab's first frontier-class model.
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