Zuckerberg Pledges $145B AI Push to Rival OpenAI and Anthropic, Downplays Risk Concerns

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has committed to spending up to $145 billion on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2026, nearly doubling the company's 2025 capital expenditure, as part of an aggressive bid to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic at the frontier of generative AI development. In an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, Zuckerberg declared that Meta has now "caught up" with the industry's leading AI labs and rejected calls from rival executives and safety advocates for a coordinated slowdown in development. The company's new Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full models, launched in October 2026, represent Meta's attempt to demonstrate parity with competitors on key benchmarks for agentic AI tasks.