Zuckerberg Rejects AI Slowdown as Meta Plans Up to $145B in 2026 Spending

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg rejected an industry-wide slowdown in artificial intelligence development, arguing that individual laboratories can make their systems safer while continuing to build more capable products.

In a Sept. 15 post, Zuckerberg said AI labs have both the responsibility and incentive to develop models that users can trust. “People won’t want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don’t do what they ask, so labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned,” he said.

Zuckerberg cited Meta’s decision to delay the release of Muse for several months while addressing safety and security concerns. He also said the “significant majority” of computing capacity should serve users rather than support systems pursuing recursive self-improvement.

Meta said in an Aug. 10 statement that it aims to distribute personal superintelligence broadly and continue supporting open-source AI models. Zuckerberg also said, “We should be careful to not slow down American competitiveness.”

The company expects 2026 capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion, including principal payments on finance leases. The spending plan underscores the scale of Meta’s continued investment in artificial intelligence as it develops personal AI agents and related infrastructure.

Muse Spark 1.1 is a multimodal reasoning model for agentic tasks released July 9, 2026. Meta’s approach favors continued development with company-level safeguards rather than a jointly imposed slowdown.

Zuckerberg said Meta did not wait for other companies to adopt its safety process. “We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us,” he said.

The position adds to the debate over AI oversight, liability and open-source models, including concerns discussed in earlier coverage of Meta’s AI safety debate.