But Meta specifically needs returns from AI products to justify the capex. Google and Microsoft eg. have profitable cloud businesses from where they can rent out GPU compute. Meta’s bet is far more risky.
As the Facebook generation dies out, so does Facebook. I just don't see it. Meta will have to continue to buy competition and hope that the ad market stays a racket forever. The only reason Meta is still relevant is advertising, just the same as Google. Eventually enough people will realize it for what it's worth: anti-competitive enshittification in order to preserve multi-billion dollar companies that have products and services that suck so bad you'd have a hard time paying people to use if they were startups today.