Meta launches a $35 billion stock sale and plans $60 billion more for AI

The $35 billion comes in two separate deals, and neither depends on the other finishing.

• Common stock: $22.5 billion of Class A shares, sold through forward sale agreements.
• Preferred stock: 250 million depositary shares, about $12.5 billion, each representing a 1/20th interest in a share of Series A mandatory convertible preferred stock.

Underwriters also get a 30-day option, meant only to cover over-allotments, to buy more: up to 37.5 million extra depositary shares, and up to $3.375 billion of extra common stock.

By the numbers: the rest is a planned at-the-market program, called an ATM, of up to $60 billion. Add it to the $35 billion and you get the figure the Financial Times reported.

Meta stresses that this part is not a done deal. It has not signed an agreement for the program, and its timing, size and terms are not set.

The program is not expected to start until the first quarter of 2027, after Meta's previously announced Class C common stock begins trading.

Three pieces of jargon carry most of this story, so here they are in plain words.

• Forward sale agreement: banks sell shares to investors now, and Meta hands the shares to the banks later. Meta can settle on dates it picks, on or before November 19, 2027, and gets its cash at that point.
• Mandatory convertible preferred: a share that pays a dividend and then turns into common stock automatically. Meta expects the conversion on or about August 15, 2029. The dividend rate and conversion terms are set when the deal prices.
• At-the-market program: Meta sells shares in small pieces over time through a bank, at market prices, instead of one big launch.

In real life think of it as the difference between selling your car in one weekend and listing a few things online every week. Same goal, very different pace.

The big picture: the filing names three cornerstone investors: Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom. Each, separately, said it is interested in buying shares in the common stock offering, up to $5 billion in total.

There is a catch. These are indications of interest, not commitments. Any of them can buy more, less or nothing, and the underwriters can allocate them more, less or nothing.

If they buy, they pay the same price and terms as every other buyer, and the underwriters earn the same discount on those shares.

Why it matters: Meta says it will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes. The wider context in its announcement is AI infrastructure.

• Spending outlook: Meta expects $135 to $145 billion of capital expenditures in 2026.
• Data centers: it says it owns data centers in 23 U.S. states and is building four superclusters, each with more than one gigawatt of capacity.
• Growth target: it expects to nearly double total infrastructure capacity in 2026 compared with 2025.

Meta also points to custom silicon and other efficiency work, which it says are aimed at lowering the cost of compute.

Meta is not raising money because it is short of it. The announcement says it generated $97 billion of operating cash flow in the first three quarters of 2026 and held about $82 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of the third quarter.

Third-quarter revenue reached $64.6 billion, up 26% year over year. Meta says it has delivered six straight quarters of more than 20% revenue growth, and that 3.64 billion people used at least one of its apps daily as of September 2026.

Its credit ratings are Aa3 and AA-, which Meta says let it raise long-term debt efficiently. It describes stock as a complementary source that diversifies its funding.

Its stated plan is a mix of operating cash flow, investment-grade debt, strategic partnerships and equity.

This is a notable change of tool. Much of the AI spending boom has been paid for with bonds. We covered how borrowing by hyperscalers, the giant companies that build most of the world's AI infrastructure, has surged this year, with Goldman Sachs tracking nearly $500 billion in AI-related debt.

Selling stock is a different bargain. Debt is repaid on a schedule. New shares mean existing shareholders own a slightly smaller slice of the company, so investors tend to watch these deals closely.

Meta also uses the announcement to describe its AI products, which we cover further down in this story.

The announcement doubles as a sales pitch, and it lists where Meta sees returns on all that computing power.

• Muse: Meta says more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada joined within the early weeks of launch, and over 25% of weekly users use it for shopping. It also delivered Muse Wonder, which it calls its first frontier model.
• Business agents: Meta estimates at least 500 million small businesses use its apps. More than 2 million use its Business Agent each week, with over 30 million conversations a week.
• Enterprise: Meta plans a Meta Enterprise Platform to serve what it calls high-margin inference demand (inference, which means running a trained AI model to answer real requests), including its API (the way other companies' software plugs into its models) and a coding product, Muse Code.
• Glasses: it has expanded its glasses lineup to include Muse.

These are Meta's own claims, taken from its filing. Nobody outside the company has audited the numbers in it.

What's next: the offerings still need to price. Meta says the preferred stock's dividend rate and conversion terms will be set at that moment, and it intends to apply to list the depositary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. There is no public market for them yet.

• Your Facebook or Instagram will not change tomorrow. This is a financing move, not a product launch.
• If you own Meta stock, the new shares and the forward sale agreements are worth reading about in the prospectus, since they affect how many shares exist.
• If you follow AI, it is one more sign that the bills for AI computing now reach into every part of the financial system.
• Watch for pricing. The final price, the preferred dividend rate and any cornerstone purchases come after launch.