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Meta's capex guidance nearly doubles as free cash flow collapses and off-balance-sheet commitments pile up

Meta wants to win the AI race so badly that it is now borrowing tricks from the era of the financial crisis to pay for it.

The company expects 2026 capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion. That is close to double the $72 billion it spent in 2025, and the money is going mostly into AI infrastructure.

Start with free cash flow, the money left over after a company pays for operations and investment. In Q2 2026, Meta’s free cash flow came in at $784 million.

A year earlier, the same figure was $8.55 billion. That works out to a 91% year-over-year drop.

Debt is climbing alongside the spending. Meta’s long-term debt reached $83.7 billion as of Q2 2026, following its heavy capex push.

Then there is the part that draws the financial-crisis comparison. Meta’s off-balance-sheet commitments could total around $420 billion, according to estimates in the research.

That estimate includes leases and special-purpose vehicles tied to data centers. A special-purpose vehicle is a separate legal entity set up to hold specific assets or debt, keeping those obligations off the parent company’s main books.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not backing down. He has defended the strategy and said Meta is prepared to invest as much as $200 billion in AI.

Part of the logic is control. Meta wants to own its AI infrastructure rather than rent computing power from outside cloud service providers.

The obvious comparison is the metaverse. Meta’s big spending on that vision weighed on its stock in 2022.

The current setup rhymes in uncomfortable ways. Once again, Meta is spending aggressively ahead of proven monetization, and once again the company is asking the market for patience.

The $420 billion off-balance-sheet estimate deserves particular attention. Obligations held through leases and special-purpose vehicles do not vanish just because they sit outside the main ledger, and they can complicate how investors judge the company’s true leverage.

Compare the visible long-term debt of $83.7 billion with that estimate. The off-book figure is roughly five times larger, which suggests the headline debt number tells only part of the story.

The next checkpoint arrives soon. Meta’s Q3 2026 earnings are scheduled for release on October 21, 2026, and the report may continue to show pressure on cash flow.

Investors will want to watch three things in that release: the free cash flow trajectory, any movement in long-term debt, and whether management updates its capex guidance.