Meta Platforms took a sharp hit as investors recoiled from a bigger spending bill and softer-than-hoped growth guidance, even as Mark Zuckerberg doubled down on a future built around personalized AI agents. Shares fell about 8.6% to 10% in intraday trading on April 30, 2026, wiping out roughly $175 billion in market value after the company lifted its capital spending forecast and warned that costs tied to AI infrastructure were rising faster than the payoff.
The selloff is a fresh reminder that Wall Street may like the AI story, but it is growing less patient with the price tag. Meta posted stronger-than-expected first-quarter revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33% from a year earlier and above the roughly $55.5 billion analysts had expected, yet that was not enough to calm investors. The company also raised full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion, while Q2 revenue guidance of $58 billion to $61 billion implied growth that was still robust but not enough to offset rising spending anxiety.
The core issue is simple: Meta is asking investors to fund a much larger AI buildout before the revenue case is fully visible. CFO Susan Li said the higher capex plan reflected higher component pricing, especially memory chips, as well as additional data center costs. That matters because Meta is already spending heavily to build the computing base needed for its next wave of products, and the market is now treating every extra dollar of infrastructure as a hurdle that needs a faster return.
Forrester Research Director Mike Proulx put it bluntly: “Meta believes AI infrastructure is now a strategic asset, but its bill is arriving faster than the pay-off. What it generated in cash this quarter almost all got eaten by AI infrastructure spending.” That line captured the mood on trading desks and in investor conversations. Meta can still show strong top-line growth, but the market is focusing more on what gets consumed by the buildout than on what gets produced by it.
The company’s appeal to the long term did little to change that. Zuckerberg told investors that personal AI agents for consumers would “be the foundation for our next wave of products and revenue lines in the months and years ahead” and an “extremely important and massive market.” The message was clear: Meta wants to position AI agents not as a side project, but as the next core platform for monetization. The problem is that investors are being asked to underwrite that future while spending accelerates now.
Meta’s Q2 revenue forecast of $58 billion to $61 billion was decent on its face, but the midpoint still only points to about 25% year-over-year growth. For a company of Meta’s scale, that is strong. Yet in this earnings setup, strong was not enough. Investors have shifted from rewarding any AI investment to scrutinizing whether the spending is expanding too quickly relative to visible returns. That is especially true when capex guidance jumps by tens of billions of dollars in a single update.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $7.31, excluding an $8 billion one-time tax benefit, while reported EPS was $10.44. The earnings details showed that Meta is still highly profitable. But the market’s message was that profitability alone does not excuse a bigger-than-expected bill when the company is also signaling a more expensive buildout ahead. The stock reaction suggests shareholders want more proof that the AI spending spree can turn into durable revenue, not just another round of infrastructure outlays.
There was one more data point that investors could not ignore: daily active users across Meta’s apps dipped sequentially to 3.56 billion from 3.58 billion. The company attributed that decline to internet disruptions in Iran and WhatsApp restrictions in Russia. Even if those explanations are reasonable, the sequential decline reinforced how little room there is for hiccups when investors are already worried about growth decelerating at the margin and costs climbing.
Wall Street’s reaction was swift. JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth downgraded Meta to Neutral and cut his price target to $725 from $825. That move is notable not because one downgrade changes the thesis, but because it reflects the broader shift in the market’s tolerance for AI spending narratives. Analysts are no longer just asking whether Meta can win in AI. They are also asking how much the company should spend to get there, and how quickly that investment can show up in revenue.
The stock’s decline also showed how much optimism had already been priced in. Meta had been rewarded for proving that its ad business could keep generating cash while it layered on new bets in AI. This quarter challenged that easy balance. The company’s revenue was solid, but the incremental cost of pursuing AI agents and infrastructure became the dominant story. That can be enough to trigger a sharp rerating, especially in a market that has become more selective with mega-cap tech valuations.
At the center of Zuckerberg’s pitch is a new kind of consumer product: AI agents that can be personalized and woven into Meta’s apps and services. The company sees those agents as a potential platform shift, one that could create new lines of revenue and deepen user engagement. That is a credible strategic ambition, and it fits Meta’s long history of turning distribution into monetization. But this time, the investment cycle is more visible, the costs are bigger, and the timeline is less certain.
That mismatch is why the stock moved so hard. Meta is still delivering scale, still producing strong revenue growth and still talking about one of the most attractive long-term AI opportunities in consumer tech. Yet the market is signaling that the company has crossed into a more difficult phase: proving that AI can be more than a story about future optionality. It must become a business case that can justify the mounting infrastructure bill.
For now, investors appear unconvinced that the math works quickly enough. Meta’s next quarterly report will be the next major catalyst, and the company has already set the bar with its Q2 revenue guide. If management wants to restore confidence, it will need to show that AI agents are not just a vision for the next wave, but a business that can begin to pay for itself while the spending is still climbing.
