According to TechCrunch, “In 2025, we rebuilt the foundations of our AI program,” Zuckerberg said on an investor call Wednesday, referring to the company’s recently restructured AI lab. “Over the coming months, we’re going to start shipping our new models and products… and I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the new year.”
While Mark Zuckerberg didn’t mention specific terms or products, he highlighted artificial intelligence-driven commerce as one of Meta’s focuses. “This also has implications for commerce,” Zuckerberg continued. “New agentic shopping tools will allow people to find just the right set of products from the businesses in our catalog.”
This aggressive timeline demonstrates Meta’s urgency to compete in the rapidly changing AI landscape. A key element of Zuckerberg’s 2026 AI plan is focused on agent-based commerce tools designed to revolutionize product discovery across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
What’s particularly striking about this announcement is that Zuckerberg explicitly acknowledges Meta’s unique advantage: personal data. The company relies on billions of users around the world to collect information about their preferences, behaviors, social connections, and shopping habits.
Zuckerberg plans to weaponize this data goldmine to offer AI-powered experiences that Amazon, Google, and emerging competitors can’t replicate. He’s betting that highly personalized shopping assistants will become indispensable to consumers.
In December, Meta acquired the general-purpose agent developer Manus, which provides similar technology. At the time, Meta said it would “continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products.”
The investor call was timed to the release of Meta’s most recent quarterly earnings, which also disclosed a significant increase in new infrastructure spending. The company now anticipates that it will spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on overall capital expenditures over the course of 2026, up from $72 billion in 2025.
In its official filing, Meta attributed the jump to “increased investment to support our Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts and core business.”
While a significant number, it still falls short of the projected $600 billion that Zuckerberg reportedly projected for Meta’s infrastructure spending by 2028.
Meta has previously faced criticism from investors for not being clear about how its massive investment in AI will impact the company’s bottom line. While details are still lacking, Zuckerberg has made it clear that the AI lab’s work will soon reach the public.
“This is going to be a big year for delivering personal superintelligence, accelerating our business, building infrastructure for the future, and shaping how our company will work going forward,” he told investors.
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