Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, told staff on Wednesday that “it’s time to pass the baton” to David Brown, a former AWS senior vice president who joined Meta in July, CNBC reported from an internal memo it obtained. Janardhan, at Meta since 2009, will leave the company in the new year.
Brown takes over the organization behind Meta’s 2026 capital expenditure guide of $135-145 billion. Meta’s purchases of property and equipment in the first nine months of 2026, $83.1 billion, were about a quarter of everything it has reported for that line since 2010, by our arithmetic from its filings.
Business Pill · Capex and Depreciation Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on capital expenditure and depreciation, the accounting behind data center spending. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss this news.
The key insight: Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure and at Meta since 2009, is handing the organization to former AWS senior vice president David Brown, CNBC reported from an internal memo. Meta’s $83.1 billion of property and equipment purchases in January to September 2026 equal 25.1% of all it has reported for that line since 2010, by our arithmetic.
Brown will now formally lead Meta’s infrastructure efforts and serve as chief technical officer of the Meta Compute initiative, CNBC reported. That initiative is spearheaded by Meta president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick and technical leader Daniel Gross, according to CNBC. Janardhan said in the memo that the handover support for Brown runs through the first quarter of 2027, as part of “the transition”.
“As we make the next set of choices about our priorities, this is the right time for Dave to take the lead in shaping that work,” Janardhan said in the memo, as quoted by CNBC. “Dave has spent his career building and operating dependable infrastructure for a wide range of demanding workloads.”
Bloomberg first reported the departure, CNBC said. The Next Web, relaying Bloomberg, quoted Mark Zuckerberg writing to Janardhan: “You’ve positioned the team and Meta well for this moment, and you’ve built a strong team that can carry this work forward”. Our earlier report on Janardhan’s exit was based on Bloomberg’s first report; we covered Brown’s move from AWS in July.
Meta purchases of property and equipment by year, 2010 to 2025, and January to September 2026, in billions of dollars. Source: Meta Forms 10-K and the Q3 2026 Form 10-Q via SEC EDGAR.
The Spending Machine Brown Inherits
Meta’s annual 10-K filings put its purchases of property and equipment at $293 million in 2010, $13.9 billion in 2018 and $69.7 billion in 2025. Its third-quarter 10-Q shows $83.1 billion for January to September 2026, against $48.3 billion a year earlier.
Added up, that is $330.6 billion from January 2010 through September 2026, and the first nine months of 2026 account for 25.1% of it, by our arithmetic. Meta’s nine-month figure already exceeds full-year 2025 by $13.4 billion, also our arithmetic.
Meta’s own capex measure, which its October 21 release says includes principal payments on finance leases, came to $85.8 billion for the nine months by our arithmetic. Landing inside the $135-145 billion guide implies $49.2 billion to $59.2 billion in the fourth quarter, the range we set out in our first piece.
Who Pays for the Build-Out
Meta reported free cash flow of minus $2.12 billion for the third quarter in its release, after $33.94 billion of property purchases. CNBC said S&P Global Ratings cited that figure when it revised Meta’s rating from AA- stable to AA- negative in late October.
Meta has also turned to the bond market this autumn: it was one of three companies that lined up bond sales on the same day, as we reported on November 2.
The Structural Read
As we read the filings, the job Brown takes on is a different size from the one Janardhan joined in 2009: Meta reported $293 million of property purchases in 2010 and $69.7 billion in 2025, and nine months of 2026 already exceed that 2025 total by $13.4 billion, by our arithmetic.
Santosh Janardhan, internal memo as quoted by CNBC, 11 November 2026
“As we make the next set of choices about our priorities, this is the right time for Dave to take the lead in shaping that work”
Three Implications
FOR THE BUILD-OUTMeta guides 2026 capex, including principal payments on finance leases, at $135-145 billion in its October 21 release; $85.8 billion was spent through September by our arithmetic.
FOR THE HANDOVER Janardhan said in the memo that the handover support for Brown runs through the first quarter of 2027, CNBC reported.
FOR THE BALANCE SHEETMeta reported third-quarter free cash flow of minus $2.12 billion, and CNBC said S&P cited that figure when it revised Meta’s outlook to negative.
The framework argues that “the seven-layer AI stack is now governed from the bottom — energy, silicon, compute capacity.”
As we read it, that makes the person running a hyperscaler’s data center organization one of its most consequential operators, and Meta’s now goes to an executive who spent nearly two decades at AWS. The framework predates this news and does not discuss it.
Meta purchases of property and equipment, January 2010 to September 2026, by period. Source: Meta Forms 10-K and Q3 2026 Form 10-Q via SEC EDGAR; period sums and shares are our arithmetic.
What Is Not Established
In the sources we read, Meta had issued no press release on the change, and its SEC filings list through November 11 shows no 8-K about it; the account rests on the memo as reported by CNBC and, via The Next Web, by Bloomberg. The two accounts differ on one title: CNBC says Brown will serve as chief technical officer of Meta Compute, while The Next Web’s account of Bloomberg says Janardhan will advise in that role after the handover.
The Next Web, relaying Bloomberg, said Janardhan gave no reason in the memo. Meta’s October release gave a 2026 capex range but no 2027 figure.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Meta’s infrastructure organization, which works under a $135-145 billion 2026 capex guide, passes to ex-AWS executive Dave Brown, according to the memo CNBC reported. Meta’s $83.1 billion of property purchases in January to September 2026 equal about a quarter of all it has reported since 2010, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. The succession and the memo quotes are from CNBC, which obtained the memo; we read its article in full. The Zuckerberg quote and the Meta Compute account attributed to Bloomberg are from The Next Web’s report of Bloomberg’s story; we did not read Bloomberg’s full article. Annual purchases of property and equipment are from Meta’s Forms 10-K and its Q3 2026 Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC (XBRL data); the guide and free cash flow are from Meta’s October 21 results release. Sums, shares and the implied fourth-quarter range are our arithmetic. Meta was not contacted for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
