Meta pay and big capex plans

Meta’s hiring filings and spending plans show the same thing: the company is paying top dollar for scarce artificial intelligence talent while preparing to spend up to $135 billion on the machines those workers need. (dol.gov) (investor.atmeta.com) Meta told investors on January 28, 2026, that it expects 2026 capital expenditures of $115 billion to $135 billion, up from $72.22 billion in 2025. The company said the increase will support its Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts and its core business. (investor.atmeta.com) Two days ago, Meta and Broadcom said they were extending their custom-chip partnership through 2029. Broadcom said Meta’s initial commitment exceeds 1 gigawatt of capacity for Meta Training and Inference Accelerator chips, the company’s in-house processors for artificial intelligence workloads. (about.fb.com) (broadcom.com) Those chips are meant to handle the computing work inside data centers more efficiently than buying every processor off the shelf. Meta said Broadcom will help with chip design, packaging, and networking as it builds what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called a “massive computing foundation” for its artificial intelligence plans. (about.fb.com) (broadcom.com) At the same time, public Labor Condition Application data shows how concentrated the pay is at the top of Meta’s technical ranks. The Department of Labor publishes those visa-related filings, and recent reporting based on the 2025 data found a Meta vice president focused on artificial intelligence with a listed base salary of $650,000. (dol.gov) (visaverge.com) The same filings show most Meta base salaries clustered far below that peak, often between $150,000 and $250,000, with software engineers making up about half of the roles in the dataset. Other reported ranges included artificial intelligence research scientists at $163,800 to $328,000 and research engineers up to about $400,000. (visaverge.com) (entrepreneur.com) That split helps explain why the pay story and the chip story belong together. Meta is not only bidding for a small number of senior researchers and executives; it is also locking in years of infrastructure supply as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and others keep pouring money into artificial intelligence systems. (investor.atmeta.com) (cnbc.com) The Broadcom deal also changes the governance picture around that partnership. CNBC reported that Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan will leave Meta’s board after two years, while Broadcom said he will remain an advisor on Meta’s custom silicon roadmap. (cnbc.com) (broadcom.com) Meta’s latest numbers show a company trying to buy time, talent, and hardware all at once. The base salaries in visa filings reach $650,000, and the infrastructure budget now reaches $135 billion. (visaverge.com) (investor.atmeta.com)