Meta ended the third quarter with more than 78,400 employees, an 8% increase from the previous year, as the social media company aggressively hired technical staff to support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
Employee compensation growth accelerated during the quarter, driven by technical hires, particularly AI talent, chief financial officer Susan Li said during the company’s Oct. 29 earnings call. The compensation increases contributed to a 32% jump in total expenses, which reached $30.7 billion in the third quarter.
The company hired across several priority areas, including monetization, infrastructure, Reality Labs, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and regulation and compliance, according to Li.
AI talent competition intensifies
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Meta Superintelligence Labs has built “the lab with the highest talent density in the industry” as the company works to establish itself as a leading AI developer.
The company expects employee compensation costs to be the second largest contributor to expense growth in 2026, Li said. Meta will recognize a full year of compensation for employees hired throughout 2025, particularly AI talent, and plans to add more technical talent in priority areas next year.
Significant expense growth ahead
Meta anticipates total expenses will grow at a significantly faster rate in 2026 compared to 2025, with infrastructure costs, including cloud expenses and depreciation, serving as the primary driver. Employee compensation will be the second largest factor.
For 2025, the company expects full-year total expenses between $116 billion and $118 billion, up from its previous outlook of $114 billion to $118 billion. This represents a 22% to 24% year-over-year growth rate.
The company also increased its capital expenditure forecast for 2025 to a range of $70 billion to $72 billion, up from its prior outlook of $66 billion to $72 billion. For 2026, Li said capital expenditure dollar growth will be notably larger than 2025 levels.
Compute capacity drives investment
Zuckerberg said the company’s compute needs have expanded meaningfully, including beyond internal expectations from the previous quarter. He described an aggressive strategy to build capacity ahead of potential breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
“I think that it’s the right strategy to aggressively front-load building capacity so that way we’re prepared for the most optimistic cases,” Zuckerberg said.
The company reported third-quarter revenue of $51.2 billion, up 26% from the previous year. Approximately 3.5 billion people used at least one of Meta’s apps daily in September.
