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Meta launches a share sale of about $35 billion to fund its AI push
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Meta will place stock in two tranches adding up to about $35 billion to pay for its AI infrastructure, and the money from the common shares will reach it by November 2027 at the latest. Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom have said they are willing, without any commitment, to take up to $5 billion. Meta is also considering selling up to about $60 billion more on the market, still with no agreement or terms.
Meta has announced two public share offerings, simultaneous and independent of each other, worth approximately $35 billion in total, according to its press release. They are part of a financing plan with which the company wants to sustain its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, and it will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes. Adding a later program of about $60 billion, the total comes to around $95 billion, the figure highlighted by Expansión.
The larger of the two offerings, of about $22.5 billion, is of Class A common stock tied to forward sale contracts with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. That is why Meta does not expect to take in any money at first: it will receive it when those contracts are settled, on one or more dates of its choosing and no later than November 19, 2027. The other, of about $12.5 billion, consists of depositary shares representing new mandatory convertible preferred stock. Unless converted earlier, they will automatically become common stock around August 15, 2029. Meta will apply to list them on the Nasdaq under the symbol METAM, and the dividend and conversion terms will be set when the offering is priced. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are also leading both placements.
Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom have signaled that, between the three of them, they could buy up to $5 billion of the common shares, at the same price as other investors. It is not a commitment: each of them could end up buying more, less or nothing.
After that would come a program of up to $60 billion to sell Class C shares on the market directly and gradually. It would not start before the first quarter of 2027, once those new shares, which the company had already announced, begin trading. Meta says it has not yet signed any agreement and that the timing, size and terms are still to be decided. According to Expansión, the new share class is part of the structure through which Meta wants to raise capital without Mark Zuckerberg losing control.
The company expects capital expenditures of between $135 billion and $145 billion in 2026 and says it will pay for them by combining the cash its business generates, investment-grade debt, strategic agreements and share issuance. Between January and September its operations generated $97 billion in cash, and at the end of September it held about $82 billion in cash, equivalents and marketable securities. Its third-quarter revenue was $64.6 billion, 26% higher than a year earlier, and it earned $9.9 billion in net income. When it presented those results last week, Meta warned that it will need hundreds of billions of dollars to fund AI over the coming years, as reported by Expansión.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
Not even a company that generates as much cash as Meta can pay for its AI race on its own: advertising is not enough to cover data centers and chips at the pace it has set itself, so it is also selling shares. The design of the deal says a lot too. With the forward sale, Meta locks in the placement now and chooses later when to collect, and the chipmakers' interest draws a loop in which suppliers become shareholders in their own customer. For the rest of the market the signal cuts both ways: demand for infrastructure is still strong, but so is the pressure to prove that so much investment will end up paying off. Every round of this size raises the bar for the revenue AI will have to generate to justify it.
Source: Expansión · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
