Metaplatforms (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday’s earnings conference call that more spending artificial intelligence (AI) Products and infrastructure “may not be what investors want to hear in the short term”, but he believes it is necessary for the tech giant to seize opportunities in the sector.

The call for results followed a third quarter tops estimates of Meta, with net income which is more than $2 billion more than expected. Advertising revenue, which accounts for the bulk of Meta’s revenue, exceeded forecasts as the company said its AI efforts had a positive impact on the effectiveness of its ads.

Meta also raised the lower range of its forecast capital expenditure to $38 billion to $40 billion, up from $37 billion to $40 billion, like the tech giant and many of its peers accelerate investments in the AI product development.

AI spending will increase in 2025

Although Zuckerberg and CFO Susan Li did not offer numerical projections for Meta’s spending in 2025, Li said they expected spending to increase next year, including an “acceleration significant growth in infrastructure spending” to support Meta’s AI products.

Zuckerberg said Meta is “making a lot of progress” with the products he published until now, as Meta-AI chatbot and AI features for its Ray-Ban smart glasses. Zuckerberg also said he expects there will be new opportunities to use technological advancements to “accelerate our core business” and provide “strong” return on investment (ROI) in the years to come.

Meta’s new Llama 4 AI model expected to release early next year

Zuckerberg said Meta AI is always on the right track to be the most used AI assistant on the market by the end of the year, crossing the 500 million mark monthly active user (MAU) threshold during the quarter.

Zuckerberg also said that Llama 4, the next generation of Meta large language model (LLM)is “well advanced in its development”, with smaller Llama 4 models expected to launch “early next year”. The upgraded model will have better reasoning ability, faster response times and other new capabilities, the Meta CEO said.

Meta shares fell 3.3% in extended trading after the earnings call. They were up 67% for the year through Wednesday’s close.