Meta Q3 2026: revenue up 26% to $64bn, and a new non-voting share class to fund AI

Meta Platforms made $64 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2026, up 26% on a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street's forecasts, and announced a new class of non-voting shares to help pay for its spending on artificial intelligence, TechCrunch reported from Wednesday's results. That is about Rs 17.7 trillion at today's dollar rate. MarketWatch reported that the shares rose after the results.

The new non-voting stock

Chief financial officer Susan Li said Meta will "create a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be distributed to all existing shareholders through a stock dividend". In plain terms, every current shareholder gets the new shares for free, and Meta can later sell or issue more of them to raise money, pay staff and buy companies without diluting the votes that keep Mark Zuckerberg in control. Li said it preserves Meta's "founder-led structure" and gives it flexibility to invest behind "unprecedented momentum" driven by AI.

Semafor first reported the plan; Meta confirmed it on the earnings call.

Costs are rising faster than sales

• Costs and expenses rose 68% on a year earlier, far faster than revenue.
• Reality Labs, the division behind Meta's AR glasses and VR headsets, is still losing money. Meta expects its losses to shrink from 2025 levels to between $18 billion and $19 billion.
• The Verge reported that Meta said its profit would have been more than $22 billion without the cost of a child safety settlement.

The results came hours after a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in a case linked to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which we covered on Wednesday.

Muse, Meta's AI push

Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada set up Muse personal agents in a month and a half, with shopping one of the top uses. Meta has released several Muse models this year, including an open-weight version, and a coding agent called Muse Code.

Why it matters in Pakistan

Many Pakistani small businesses sell through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and its ad prices shape what they pay to reach customers. Freelancers and agencies who earn in dollars from Meta ad work can check what their income means after tax with our freelancer tax calculator.