Meta’s AI Infrastructure Outlay Swells to $225 Billion as Louisiana Megacenter Gets Underway
Published on 07/14/2026 at 18:26 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Meta Platforms is moving ahead with a record-breaking data-center expansion in Louisiana, committing more than €50 billion to a facility that will eventually draw 5 gigawatts of power. The announcement, made on July 13, 2026, underscores the scale of the company’s AI ambitions — and arrives just as Wall Street sharply raises its estimates for what those ambitions will ultimately cost.
That same week, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak lifted his 2027 capital-expenditure forecast for Meta to $225 billion, a 29% jump from his prior view, and penciled in $250 billion for 2028. The revision reflects a combination of rising memory-chip prices, higher costs for building “powered shells” — pre-fitted data-center shells that tenants finish themselves — and growing pushback from local communities and political uncertainty that stretches project timelines to as long as three years from planning to completion.
The market’s immediate reaction was muted. Meta shares slipped 1.18% on Tuesday to €570.50, but the decline did little to dent a broader rally: the stock has added 5.80% over the past week and 11.47% over the past month. From the year’s low of €452.10, reached on March 27, 2026, the recovery has been substantial. Technical indicators support the uptrend — the stock trades 9.77% above its 50-day moving average of €519.74 and 4.21% above its 200-day moving average of €547.45, while the relative-strength index of 62.5 suggests neither overbought nor oversold conditions.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Meta?
The Louisiana project alone represents a step-change in investment scale for Meta — no previous buildout in the company’s history has carried such a price tag. Yet it is only one piece of a much larger industry picture. Morgan Stanley now expects five major tech players, including Alphabet, Meta and Amazon, to collectively spend between $1.2 trillion and $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure by 2028, driven by a 20% rise in cost per gigawatt of compute capacity. The strain on balance sheets will be severe: the bank estimates that four of the largest hyperscalers will shoulder roughly $1.29 trillion in combined capex in 2028 against free cash flow of only about $230 billion — a ratio that leaves share buybacks and dividends heavily constrained.
Despite the eye-watering outlay forecasts, analysts remain broadly positive on Meta. Morgan Stanley reiterated its buy rating and a $775 price target, implying roughly 16% upside from current levels. UBS, while more cautious, last week trimmed its target from $865 to $766 but kept its buy recommendation intact. The differing views reflect a central tension: where one side sees a necessary bet on AI dominance, the other points to the mounting financing challenge.
That challenge is not lost on Meta’s leadership. At a recent internal meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the development of AI agents had not “accelerated as expected” and that the wagers placed on the company’s restructured AI organization had “not yet paid off.” The admission, reported by Reuters, adds weight to the question that will dominate Meta’s next quarterly report: how the company plans to translate a capex trajectory now exceeding $250 billion annually into tangible revenue.
In the meantime, Meta continues to reward shareholders in small increments. It paid a quarterly dividend of $0.525 per share on June 25, 2026, to holders of record on June 15. The company has never conducted a stock split since its 2012 IPO, allowing the share price to appreciate freely. With a market capitalization of roughly €1.488 trillion, Meta remains one of the heaviest weights in the technology sector — and its Louisiana megacenter is poised to test whether that weight can be matched by returns.
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