Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wears the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, as he delivers a speech presenting the new line of smart glasses, during the Meta Connect event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., Sept. 17, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Meta is slated to report third-quarter earnings on Wednesday after the bell and investors will be watching for any indication that it will increase spending on artificial intelligence.
Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:
Earnings per share: $6.69Revenue: $49.4 billion
Meta has spent the year investing heavily in AI, and it conducted a massive overhaul of the organization leading those efforts after the lukewarm debut of its open-source Llama 4 software in April.
The social media company said last Wednesday that it would lay off about 600 workers in its Superintelligence Labs AI unit, but it left that group’s top-tier TBD Labs unscathed. A day before, Meta said it formed a joint venture agreement with Blue Owl Capital in a deal worth $27 billion to help fund and build a gigantic data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
When it reported second-quarter earnings in July, Meta said that its heavy AI spending would “result in a 2026 year-over-year expense growth rate that is above the 2025 expense growth.” At the time, Meta raised the low end of its previous outlook for 2025 total expenses and said it expected the figure to come in the range of $114 billion to $118 billion.
Wall Street is expecting Meta to report third-quarter sales of $49.4 billion, representing a 22% year-over-year increase, according to LSEG. Overall sales for Meta’s full year are projected to jump 19% year over year to $196.2 billion.
Meta’s advertising sales are expected to come in at $48.5 billion for the third quarter, according to analysts polled by StreetAccount.
Wall Street expects Meta to report 3.5 billion daily active people for the third quarter.
Investors may be monitoring for any signs that its Meta AI app is getting more traction ever since it debuted the AI-powered Vibes short video creation tool and social feed on Sept. 25. Downloads of the Meta AI app on both iOS and Android soared 56% month to month to 3.9 million downloads as of Oct. 18, according to data provided to CNBC by mobile research firm Appfigures.
But while Meta has been paying creators to post AI-generated videos on Vibes, as CNBC reported on Tuesday, OpenAI’s competing Sora app appears to have logged more downloads on iOS relative to the Meta AI app during the same time period, the Appfigures data showed. Sora recorded 2.6 million downloads on iOS from Sept. 30 through Oct. 18, while Meta AI had 1.1 million.
Investors are also likely watching for any signs Meta may be shifting its Metaverse strategy.
Meta said Monday that Vishal Shah, who was previously leading the company’s metaverse initiatives, would become a product leader for its AI unit.
The company’s Reality Labs unit — which developers virtual reality, augmented reality and AI-powered smart glasses — is expected to post an operating loss of $5.1 billion while generating $316 million in sales in the third quarter, according to StreetAccount.
WATCH: Earnings are more important to markets than the Fed.
