Meta’s 2026 playbook: AI megadeal with AMD, a mobile‑first metaverse, and a race for power

Meta in 2026: AI-first bets, a mobile metaverse pivot, and an arms race for power and chips

Meta Platforms is accelerating into an AI-heavy future. In the past few weeks alone, the company inked a blockbuster AI-chip pact with AMD, shifted its Horizon Worlds strategy toward mobile, expanded long-term power deals (including nuclear) to feed compute-hungry data centers, and doubled down on record capital expenditures. Threads, meanwhile, is quietly outpacing X on mobile usage in early 2026, underscoring Meta’s continued gravitational pull in consumer social. (ir.amd.com)

The AMD megadeal: 6 gigawatts of GPUs and a potential 10% stake

Meta signed a multi‑year agreement with AMD to buy up to six gigawatts of Instinct GPUs. The arrangement includes a performance‑based warrant allowing Meta to purchase up to 160 million AMD shares at $0.01 per share if shipment, stock‑price, and technical milestones are met—an unusual structure that could give Meta up to a 10% stake if fully vested. Initial one‑gigawatt deliveries are slated to begin in the second half of 2026. The terms were disclosed in AMD’s Feb. 24, 2026 Form 8‑K, with additional reporting by the Financial Times and others. (ir.amd.com)

Why it matters: Nvidia still dominates AI chips, but Meta is now visibly hedging its supply across vendors. The AMD accord follows Meta’s multi‑generation expansion with Nvidia, and signals a broader industry trend toward multi‑vendor GPU strategies to secure capacity. (techradar.com)

‘Metaverse’ re-centered on phones: Horizon Worlds goes mobile‑first

After years of subsidizing VR content, Meta is separating its Quest VR platform from Horizon Worlds and focusing Worlds “almost exclusively” on mobile—explicitly targeting the Roblox/Fortnite audience. The pivot accompanies reported layoffs of around 10% in Reality Labs and the closure of several internal VR studios, with Supernatural moving to maintenance mode. Meta says 86% of VR time is in third‑party apps, and it will invest more in that ecosystem while maintaining a hardware roadmap. (theverge.com)

Record capex, ‘Meta Compute,’ and the power problem

Meta guided 2026 capital expenditures to $115–$135 billion—by far its largest annual outlay—driven by AI data centers, networking, and chip purchases. Management still expects higher operating income in 2026 despite the surge. The aggressive investment coincides with a new top‑level program, “Meta Compute,” to build “tens of gigawatts” of AI infrastructure this decade. (axios.com)

To keep pace, Meta struck a multiyear, up-to-$6 billion agreement with Corning to supply optical fiber and connectivity gear for U.S. data centers, and continues scaling its Hyperion campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana—now financed through a Blue Owl‑led vehicle and expanded with additional land purchases. Local stakeholders and advocates have questioned the project’s cost/risk structure and grid impacts, highlighting the rising political and community sensitivities around AI power demand. (corning.com)

Nuclear deals to firm up the grid

In January, Meta unveiled a series of nuclear agreements that could support up to 6.6 GW of firm power by the mid‑2030s, including 2.1 GW from existing Vistra plants (plus uprates), funding commitments with TerraPower’s Natrium reactors (with rights to energy from additional units), and a prospective 1.2 GW campus with Oklo in Ohio. The deals augment a 20‑year, ~1.1 GW purchase from Constellation’s Clinton plant announced in 2025. (about.fb.com)

AI stack: Llama 3.1 goes big, Meta AI expands, and early monetization shows up in messaging

On the model front, Meta’s Llama 3.1 family includes a 405B‑parameter release that the company positions as a frontier‑level open model, with 128k context and expanded language support—now available across major clouds and partners. (about.fb.com)

The company’s assistant, Meta AI, has rolled out across dozens of countries and languages, including a Europe launch in 2025 (with feature limitations tailored to regional rules). By late 2025, Meta reported “more than 1 billion” monthly users interacting with Meta AI across its apps. (about.fb.com)

AI is also feeding measurable business results: Meta says paid WhatsApp messaging crossed a $2 billion annual run‑rate in Q4 2025, with “Business AIs” already handling over a million weekly conversations in early pilot markets, and click‑to‑message ad growth accelerating. (about.fb.com)

Threads’ momentum: edging past X on mobile

Threads has continued its steady climb since 2024. As of January 2026, multiple analyses indicate Threads has surpassed X (formerly Twitter) in global daily mobile users, even as X retains web traffic advantages and a narrow U.S. mobile lead. Earlier, Meta disclosed that Threads had cleared 350 million MAUs by April 2025 and then 400 million by August 2025. (theverge.com)

Leadership and governance moves

Underscoring the capital intensity of its AI infrastructure buildout, Meta appointed Dina Powell McCormick as President and Vice Chairman on January 12, 2026. Powell McCormick—an ex‑Goldman partner and former U.S. national security official—will help orchestrate strategic partnerships and innovative financing to scale Meta’s compute push. (about.fb.com)

Policy, regulation, and litigation: a shifting landscape

• U.S. antitrust: On November 18, 2025, a federal court ruled the FTC failed to prove Meta unlawfully monopolized “personal social networking,” a major win that spared Meta any breakup of Instagram or WhatsApp. The Commission said it was reviewing options. (ft.com)

• EU Digital Markets Act: After Brussels deemed Meta’s “pay‑or‑consent” ad model non‑compliant in 2024, the company agreed to present EU users with new choices introducing a less‑personalized ads option in January 2026. That model remains under scrutiny as regulators and advocates press for a truly “free” privacy‑preserving alternative. (techcrunch.com)

• Youth safety and content moderation: Meta faces escalating suits alleging harm to minors’ mental health and insufficient protections, including trials now underway in California and New Mexico. Separately, law‑enforcement groups say an influx of lower‑quality AI‑generated CSAM tips is straining investigations—a tension point as platforms expand encryption and automated detection. Meta disputes characterizations of its safety tools and says it remains a leading reporter to NCMEC. (apnews.com)

What to watch next

• Chip deliveries and software maturity: AMD shipments begin in 2H 2026; watch for ROCm and ecosystem progress that narrows the gap with Nvidia and eases developer friction. (ir.amd.com)
• Power and siting: Nuclear timelines extend through the early‑to‑mid 2030s—leaving Meta dependent on parallel grid deals, fiber buildouts, and local approvals in the near term. Community pushback around Hyperion illustrates the permitting and political risks. (about.fb.com)
• Product and engagement: Will a mobile‑first Horizon Worlds convert social reach into Roblox‑like network effects—and can Threads sustain its daily‑use lead on mobile while closing gaps in web engagement? (techcrunch.com)

Bottom line: Meta is retooling around AI infrastructure at a scale that rivals the largest industrial buildouts of the past decade—financing chips, fiber, power, and data centers while iterating fast on assistants, open models, and social apps. The strategy carries execution, regulatory, and community risks, but if Meta hits its milestones, 2026 could be the year its AI flywheel—compute, models, products, and monetization—starts spinning in sync. (axios.com)