{"version":"1.0","type":"card","id":"7037fafb-6038-4ee7-abd4-332a7c483858","url":"https://stacklist.com/card/7037fafb-6038-4ee7-abd4-332a7c483858","title":"Meta's free cash flow fell 91% to $784M - and it raised the spending floor anyway","source_url":"https://fortune.com/2026/07/29/meta-earnings-zuckerberg-hints-cloud-business-free-cash-flow-capex/","note":"Q2 revenue of $60.8B, up 28% and ahead of consensus, against free cash flow of $784M, down 91%. Capital expenditure was $31.08B in the quarter, more than double the $17.0B of Q2 2025, while operating cash flow did not grow proportionally. Rather than trim, Meta raised the floor of its full-year capex guidance to $130-145B from $125-145B. The stock fell about 10%. Not OpenAI's cost structure - but the most legible published account of what building this capacity does to a cash flow statement.","image":{"url":"https://ucarecdn.com/e9dd8dfc-409f-4015-a834-b16558271887/","alt":"Meta's free cash flow fell 91% to $784M - and it raised the spending floor anyway","width":1280,"height":800},"stack":{"id":"b29a0779-37ee-4177-95ec-7026903a8847","title":"Signals Served #022 - The Price Stopped Being a Cost","url":"https://stacklist.com/c/finance/stack/b29a0779-37ee-4177-95ec-7026903a8847"},"created_at":"2026-08-04T01:46:52.608Z","updated_at":null,"aco":{"summary":"Meta's free cash flow plummeted 91% to $784M in Q2 despite beating revenue expectations, as the company dramatically increased capital expenditure to $31.1B for AI infrastructure while maintaining its spending floor. CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the massive investment, stating Meta plans to monetize AI services rather than simply renting compute capacity like competitors Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.","tags":["meta","free-cash-flow","capex","ai-infrastructure","earnings","cloud-business"],"key_entities":[{"name":"Meta","type":"organization","confidence":0.99},{"name":"Mark Zuckerberg","type":"person","confidence":0.99},{"name":"Microsoft","type":"organization","confidence":0.95},{"name":"Amazon","type":"organization","confidence":0.95},{"name":"Google","type":"organization","confidence":0.95},{"name":"capital-expenditure","type":"concept","confidence":0.98},{"name":"AI-infrastructure","type":"concept","confidence":0.97},{"name":"cloud-business","type":"concept","confidence":0.96},{"name":"Q2-earnings-report","type":"event","confidence":0.94}],"classification":"analysis","language":"en","confidence":0.85,"provenance":{"model":"claude-haiku-4-5","tool":"@stacklist/be@0.1.0","confidence":0.85,"timestamp":"2026-08-04T01:47:02.419Z"},"token_counts":{"approximate":1308,"cl100k":1044},"content_hash":"sha256:3253abf2b2949f88ad3dcf96203ac900042410158e739c98b5b312cefc837a99","acp_version":"0.2","body_available":true,"body_tokens":1308,"visibility":"public","agent_accessible":true,"status":"final"},"_links":{"self":"/api/public/card/7037fafb-6038-4ee7-abd4-332a7c483858.json","html":"https://stacklist.com/card/7037fafb-6038-4ee7-abd4-332a7c483858","md":"/api/public/card/7037fafb-6038-4ee7-abd4-332a7c483858.md","stack_json":"/api/public/stack/b29a0779-37ee-4177-95ec-7026903a8847.json"}}