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Wyden and six senators ask Meta to justify research tax credits on its AI data centers

Meta's research credits rose from $700 million to $3.9 billion in two years, and the senators want to know how much went on chips.

By Think Facility · October 15, 2026 · Meta AI policy

On October 14, 2026, Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden and six other senators wrote to Mark Zuckerberg asking Meta to justify the federal research tax credits it has claimed while building AI data centers. Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Ben Ray Luján and Peter Welch signed with him.

So is a data center an experiment? According to the reporting the senators cite, Meta called its AI data centers "pilot models", and that label is what would make the spending eligible.

Sent
October 14, 2026
To
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Meta's research credits
$700 million in 2023, $3.9 billion in 2025
Questions for Meta
10

What the senators say is wrong with it

The credit is meant to reward experimental research, their release says, and scaling up computing that already works isn't that. Meta's own disclosures put its research credits at $700 million in 2023, about $2 billion in 2024 and about $3.9 billion in 2025.

A gray-haired man in a navy suit and purple tie speaks beside a podium in a wood-paneled room, between a woman and another man
Senator Ron Wyden, who led the letter, speaking at a news conference in a Senate hearing room. Photo: POMED, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The federal research credit can be a useful and necessary tool to support our nation’s innovation economy and cutting-edge research

From [2026-10-14] Wyden, Whitehouse, Warren, Cortez Masto, Hassan, Luján, Welch, Question Meta’s Use of Billions in Research and Development Tax Credits to Subsidize Its AI Data Center Construction Boom | The United States Senate Committee on Finance

If the reporting is right, Meta alone would account for more than 10 percent of all the research credits claimed in the US (that's using Joint Committee on Taxation figures, per the release).

Subsidizing your A.I. data center build is not close to meeting this standard.

[2026-10-14] Wyden, Whitehouse, Warren, Cortez Masto, Hassan, Luján, Welch, Question Meta’s Use of Billions in Research and Development Tax Credits to Subsidize Its AI Data Center Construction Boom | The United States Senate Committee on Finance

What they want Meta to answer

There are ten. Most go year by year: how much of each year's credit paid for microchips, computing equipment and the rest of what an AI data center needs? The question I'd most like answered asks whether Meta treats AI data centers as eligible while its ordinary ones aren't, and if so, on what legal reasoning.

Two are about advisers. Did EY, or any other accounting or law firm, tell Meta the spending qualified? If there's a written opinion, they want a copy.

The last two reopen an older fight. In 2013 Meta claimed that the $4.1 billion Zuckerberg got by exercising stock options should count toward research credits, and the IRS is now seeking $355 million in back taxes over it. Will Meta keep contesting that? The senators ask.

Where this fits

Warren's been here before. On October 10 we covered her report with Blumenthal and Van Hollen saying AI data center companies aren't paying their full costs. This time it's a tax break, and one company, named.

The release doesn't say when Meta has to reply.

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