Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, just dropped its second quarter earnings—and spoiler alert: they crushed it. Revenue jumped a solid 22% year-over-year, showing that Meta’s ad business is still a major moneymaker, even while they’re pouring serious cash into artificial intelligence. Meta pulled in $47.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, topping Wall Street analysts’ expectations. What’s even more impressive is the company’s net income reached $18.3 billion between April and June. Investors are bullish leading Meta’s stock to shoot up 11% in after-hours trading.
For the first time this year, Meta also kept its capital spending outlook steady, which might calm some of the nerves around Mark Zuckerberg’s big bets on AI. While the company still plan to spend up to $72 billion in 2025, most of the capital expenditure will go toward AI infrastructure and Research and development. Analysts have reached positive consensus around Meta’s recent strategy as they agree the company’s ad targeting is already getting sharper because of AI.
The Tech Race Is Heating Up
Meta’s not the only one having a moment. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) just posted record sales and bumped up its annual spending forecast by 13%. Microsoft is also on a roll with its cloud services up 39% and revenue beating expectations.
Zuckerberg’s doubling down on his vision of “personal superintelligence”—think of AI that’s totally tailored to the respective consumer. To get there, Meta’s been on a hiring and buying spree. They scooped up nearly half of Scale AI (a data-labeling startup) for a whopping $14 billion, and the company us handing out massive pay packages to AI talent—some reportedly in the hundreds of millions.
Roadblocks, Delays, What's Next
Of course, it’s not all smooth sailing. Meta’s AI division has hit some bumps: employee turnover, team shakeups, and delays. Most notably, the company decided to hold off on releasing its most powerful AI model (nicknamed Behemoth) after April’s updates to its Llama model did not particularly wow the engineering community.
Still, the company is staying optimistic. For the current quarter, Meta expects revenue to grow between 17% and 24%, which suggests they’re feeling good about both their advertising business and AI-powered future. Another positive for the company is the fact that active users across Meta’s family of apps are up 6% year-over-year, which means people are still scrolling on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp despite experiencing strong competition from TikTok.
Today Mark shared Meta’s vision for the future of personal superintelligence for everyone.
— AI at Meta (@AIatMeta) July 30, 2025
Read his full letter here: https://t.co/2p68g36KMj pic.twitter.com/Hpzf77jAiG