1. This isn't a single corp, it is multiple corps. For a sense of scale, MSFT alone spent ~$55B in Capex last year. Check out this[1] for a sense of how much different industries spend each year. Note that this will cross several industries including Power, Telecom, Software, electrical equip, etc.

2. There is no commitment to spend in a single year

3. There is no actual contractual commit here, this is a press release (i.e. Marketing)

4. There is not actually a $500B pile of gold being spent. This is more of a "this is how big we think this industry will be and how much we may spend to get exposure to that industry"

[1] https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile...

The VR investment was a calculated risk that may or may not pay off in a longer time horizon. Meta is the leading VR company and well-positioned to benefit the most from whatever comes from the industry in the future.

The demand for more AI compute is already here and is less risky of an investment.

"Centralized planning" was effective under Bell Labs

Also I am not an economist but the VR failure was not dead-weight loss. If you invested in something downstream of that you profited off of Zuck's venture. Dead-weight loss is more of a gov-driven malinvestment

> $500b is not business as usual for any corporation

"Up to $500bn" is business as usual for Silicon Valley post-2021.