The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that Mark Zuckerberg is asking alarmed investors for patience again. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post reports that after Meta revealed it will spend billions of dollars more than expected this year -- fuelled by investments in artificial intelligence -- the company's chief executive officer did his best to soothe Wall Street. The spending forecast, however, coupled with slower sales growth than anticipated, sent the shares tumbling as much as 15 per cent in premarket trading on Thursday. It was a familiar pitch for Mr. Zuckerberg, who has said before that the company's futuristic technological bets will eventually pay off and that savvy shareholders should stick around. The strategic pivot may have caught investors by surprise because Meta had embraced aggressive cost-cutting in recent quarters to boost profit. Its stock had been up 39 per cent so far this year at market close on Wednesday and was trading near all-time highs for the past month. Meta is now plowing ever more resources into AI, which requires significant investments in computing power -- part of an arms race with rivals from Alphabet to Microsoft for supremacy in this fast-developing technology.