Meta reported third-quarter revenue of $64.60 billion, up 26.1%, helped by AI-driven ad ranking, but GAAP EPS of $3.83 missed the $5.70 consensus due to a $9.89B legal charge. Capex reached $34.91B, pushing free cash flow to negative $2.12B, and Meta narrowed its 2026 capex guidance to $135B–$145B while aiming to serve as much high-margin inference as possible in its data centers. Apple reported $109.42B in revenue and EPS of $2.02, beating estimates, with Mac revenue up 29%, and spent just $2.37B on capex in fiscal Q1 as much inference runs on devices. The author leans toward Apple’s lower-capital approach, while Meta expects to make its Muse model more than 10x more cost-efficient within a year. Apple shares are up 26.88% this year versus 5.93% for Meta.
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