2025-09-09T23:25:48Z
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Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Meta, attended a formal dinner event hosted at the White House. During this gathering, he made a particularly striking statement: Meta intends to commit at least $600 billion toward the development of American data centers as well as a wide range of supportive infrastructure projects, with the plan stretching all the way through 2028.
This declaration, unsurprisingly, attracted significant attention, not only because of its sheer magnitude but also because of the financial and operational implications for a company of Meta’s size. Naturally, the responsibility of clarifying and contextualizing the bold claim soon fell on Susan Li, Meta’s Chief Financial Officer. At a conference held in San Francisco on Tuesday, hosted by Goldman Sachs, she was asked directly to elaborate on this massive pledge.
To better grasp the challenge she faced, imagine your own employer unexpectedly announcing before government officials that your company has committed itself to spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several years. Now imagine being tasked with addressing analysts, investors, and reporters to logically justify and methodically explain where such staggering sums might go. Such a task is daunting, even intimidating, but it was exactly the situation Susan Li faced earlier in the week.
Li was specifically questioned about Zuckerberg’s meeting at the White House, which took place on September 4. That evening, the Meta CEO joined President Donald Trump and other prominent executives from the technology sector. During that conversation, Zuckerberg mentioned, somewhat casually, that Meta would be investing roughly—or as he phrased it, “something like…I don’t know, at least $600 billion”—into the U.S. economy before the conclusion of 2028.
Onstage at the San Francisco event, Li carefully explained that there is an important and often overlooked difference between how visionary founders articulate grand ambitions and how methodical finance executives choose to frame such projections. In a lighthearted manner that drew laughter from the assembled audience of analysts and investors, she summarized it succinctly: “The way we speak about these things differs because one of us is a financial steward, a CFO, while the other is a Silicon Valley visionary CEO.”
She emphasized that Zuckerberg’s offhand comment had generated “a lot of excitement” in the markets and beyond. Because of this attention, she felt it was necessary to clarify more precisely what the figure actually encompassed. According to Li, the $600 billion pledge should not be interpreted as a single monolithic line item or an exact financial forecast. Instead, it is best viewed as “the total envelope” of Meta’s planned U.S. spending commitments for the 2023–2028 period. This amount includes every major category of investment relevant to Meta’s American operations: massive expenditures on data center infrastructure, ongoing projects ensuring technological capacity, and even comprehensive investments designed to support all facets of U.S. business activities. These activities range from expansion of physical facilities to human resource commitments—such as the costs of recruiting, hiring, and compensating the many employees Meta will bring on during that time.
Li was candid in noting that, in corporate finance, no one has “a perfect crystal ball.” In other words, while these numbers represent the company’s current thinking and strategic objectives, they remain projections subject to change as conditions evolve. Nevertheless, the ambition behind the figure demonstrates the scale at which Meta envisions strengthening its American presence and underscores the crucial distinction between forward-looking visionary statements and stricter, more precise financial reporting.
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Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-cfo-explains-mark-zuckerberg-600-billion-white-house-pledge-2025-9
