Meta Platforms is in the middle of its longest daily losing streak ever, and investors have wiped out $223 billion in market value along the way. The sell-off, now in its ninth consecutive session, reflects growing unease about how much the company is pouring into artificial intelligence without a clear payoff in sight.
The scale of the losses
No other stock in Meta's history has fallen for this many days in a row. The $223 billion drop in market capitalization is roughly the size of the entire market value of companies like Netflix or Bank of America. For context, that's more than the annual GDP of many countries.
The slide began after Meta reported its latest earnings. While revenue beat expectations, the company's forecast for sharply higher capital spending — driven by AI infrastructure — spooked the Street. Investors are asking whether those billions will ever translate into real revenue growth.
Why investors are worried
Meta has been one of the most aggressive Big Tech spenders on AI. It's building massive data centers, buying up Nvidia's H100 chips by the tens of thousands, and pouring resources into its large language model, Llama. The problem: AI is still a cost center, not a profit center.
Advertising, Meta's main moneymaker, is growing but not fast enough to offset the spending surge. Meanwhile, rivals like Google and Microsoft are also investing heavily, raising the stakes in an AI arms race where the winner may not be clear for years. Investors hate uncertainty, and Meta is serving up plenty of it.
The company's core social media business faces its own headwinds. TikTok's growth continues to eat into user attention, and regulatory pressure in Europe and the U.S. isn't letting up. Meta's pivot to the metaverse, rebranded as Reality Labs, has already burned through tens of billions with little to show for it. Now AI is the new money pit.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended the spending, arguing that Meta needs to be at the forefront of AI or risk being left behind. He's pointed to early wins like AI-powered recommendation systems that boosted engagement on Facebook and Instagram. But the market isn't buying it — at least not yet.
The next big test comes when Meta reports its next quarterly earnings. If the company can show that its AI investments are starting to generate revenue — through better ad targeting, new products, or cost savings — the narrative could shift. Until then, the losing streak may not be over.
One wild card: Meta's board could authorize a new share buyback program to stem the bleeding. But that would only mask the underlying problem. The real question is whether Meta's AI bet will pay off before investors lose patience entirely.
