- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended a dinner at the White House earlier this month.
- He said Meta would spend at least $600 billion on US data centers and infrastructure through 2028.
- Meta CFO Susan Li was quizzed about this huge commitment at a conference on Tuesday.
Imagine your boss goes to the White House and says your company will spend $600 billion in the US through 2028. Now, imagine you have to go onstage and explain the math and logic behind such a huge commitment.
I wouldn't want to do it. But this is what Meta chief financial officer Susan Li did on Tuesday at a Goldman Sachs conference in San Francisco.
While onstage, Li was asked about Mark Zuckerberg's recent visit with President Donald Trump and other tech executives on September 4. While there, the Meta CEO said his company would invest "something like…I don't know, at least $600 billion through 2028 in the US."
On Tuesday, Li explained there's a big difference between how tech founders and bean counters speak about such things.
"The way we talk about these things is, one of us is a CFO and one of us is a Silicon Valley tech visionary," Li said, getting a laugh from the crowd of investors and analysts.
There's been "a lot of excitement" about Zuckerberg's comments, she said, and went on to clarify.
That $600 billion number refers to "the total envelope" of Meta's US investment plans from this year through 2028. It includes all Meta's data center infrastructure plans in the US, along with "all the investments that go towards supporting our US business operations," including the people Meta hires, Li said.
"We don't have a perfect crystal ball," she said, adding that this is how Meta thinks about its spending plans right now.
Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at [email protected].
