Meta Q3: $64.6B revenue, capex raised to $135-145B as Muse agents pass 10M users

Meta reported Q3 revenue of $64.6B, up 26% year over year. The bigger story was spending: free cash flow turned negative at -$2.12B, and Meta lifted 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $135-145B. It is also creating a new nonvoting Class C stock to help fund AI infrastructure — an unusual move that lets it raise equity without diluting Zuckerberg's control.

On product, Meta introduced Muse Wonder, which it calls its first frontier model, and gave figures for its Muse personal agent. More than 10M users in the US and Canada have set one up, and 25% use it daily. Paid tiers cost $20 and $100 per month, putting Meta in direct subscription competition with ChatGPT and Claude, whose new Duet agent launched the same day.

This caps Meta's month-long Muse push, which includes the open-weight Muse Spark Open released October 15. Meta's bet is distribution: billions of users across its apps, so even modest conversion is large. The capex number places Meta alongside OpenAI and DeepSeek in this week's capital arms race.

The skeptics' case: spending ran higher than expected, and analysts cited a 23% 14-day retention for Muse, below platform averages. Investors will want proof that paid tiers can offset negative free cash flow. Watch Q4 subscriber disclosures and whether the Class C stock structure draws governance pushback.