Facebook owner Meta unveils a record $95bn share sale to bankroll its AI push, with spending draining its cash reserves
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, plans to sell $95bn of new stock to fund the company's AI ambitions as smaller rivals face collapse amid tightening credit in September.Elon Musk has warned that more than 200 neoclouds face collapse as debt markets pull funding from artificial intelligence start-ups.
Mark Zuckerberg is offloading as much as $35bn in public stock — covering new non-voting Class C shares — and launching a separate $60bn at-the-market programme, as Meta's free cash flow swung to a negative $2.12bn from a positive $10.63bn in the same period a year ago. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading both offerings, with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom having agreed to purchase up to $5bn of common stock between them.
Meta's costs surged 68 per cent to $51.6bn last quarter even as revenue climbed 26 per cent to $64.6bn.
Zuckerberg is seeking to construct four computing clusters each surpassing one gigawatt and to nearly double the company's infrastructure capacity this year.
Meta has outlined roughly $825bn in future spending commitments, the bulk of them linked to data centres, having already raised its capital expenditure forecast for the full year to as much as $145bn.
