Fortune's Molly A. Wallace argues in an October 20 piece that Mark Zuckerberg's push to own the full AI stack, from data centers to chips, reflects years of friction with Apple and Google over the limits of smartphone platforms. The article presents that history as the reasoning behind Meta's AI spending and its agentic commerce plans.
The numbers
Meta guided for as much as $145 billion in capital expenditures this year. Zuckerberg said: “We're going to write this check for, like, I don't know, like $100 billion, $200 billion.” The article says a one-gigawatt AI data center costs $50 billion to $60 billion to build and about $15 billion a year to run, and that Meta's Hyperion campus in Louisiana is designed to scale to five gigawatts. Advertising made up about 98% of Meta's revenue last quarter, and eMarketer projects Meta's worldwide ad revenue will reach $243.46 billion this year, surpassing Google's.
The Apple history
Zuckerberg wrote in a 2024 post: “One of my formative experiences has been building our services constrained by what Apple will let us build on their platforms.” Meta estimated that Apple's 2021 tracking change cost it about $10 billion in 2022. Of the AI bet, Zuckerberg said: “Meta is a full-stack tech company,” and, “It's about being able to build the best things.”
Products and people
Muse Wonder, Meta's first frontier-class model, launched October 12, with a more powerful Muse Wonder Full described separately. Muse, Meta's personal AI agent, is free, with paid plans at $20 and $100 a month. Meta is reportedly building a cloud business, which Zuckerberg confirmed on its earnings call. Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, said decisions of this size are made long before there are proof points on whether the thing is even working, and that the best personal agent should feel like a team of experts in your corner.
The open question
The article notes that Zuckerberg has not directly addressed whether agents could reduce the ad impressions that generate nearly all of Meta's revenue. Bank of America analyst Justin Post named rising AI spending, not agents, as Meta's top risk. Zuckerberg's view that agents will expand commerce is a forward-looking claim, not a result.
Source: Fortune. This is an AI Business Watch summary of the original report.