For most of the past decade, the biggest technology companies have had one problem with money: too much of it. They paid for data centers out of their own cash flow. Meta’s announcement on Monday is the clearest sign yet that the AI buildout has broken that model, even for one of the most profitable businesses on Earth.
Meta said it is launching about $35 billion of stock offerings now and plans an approximately $60 billion at-the-market program later, according to its press release. Together that is up to $95 billion, the figure The Decoder reported, citing The Information. The same release says Meta generated $97 billion of operating cash flow in the first nine months of 2026 and ended September with about $82 billion in cash and marketable securities. It also expects $135 billion to $145 billion of capital expenditures this year.
The size is what made headlines. My take: the structure is the more important story.
What Meta is actually selling
The first wave has two parts. About $22.5 billion is Class A common stock sold through forward sale agreements with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which means Meta does not receive the money up front; it can settle the contracts any time through November 19, 2027, the prospectus says. The other $12.5 billion is mandatory convertible preferred stock, sold as $50 depositary shares that pay a dividend and turn into common stock around August 15, 2029.
The larger $60 billion piece does not exist yet. Meta says it has not signed any agreement for the at-the-market program and does not expect it to start before the first quarter of 2027, when trading begins in its new Class C stock. The prospectus spells out what those shares are: Class A carries one vote per share, Class B carries ten, and Class C will have no voting rights at all. The charter change creating them takes effect January 19, 2027.
The Financial Times flagged a third element when the news broke:
Breaking news: Meta is planning to raise $95bn in a stock offering to fuel its massive AI infrastructure spending, backed by chipmakers Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom, who will act as cornerstone investors. https://t.co/0RhgOzu6Uq pic.twitter.com/qkFkqcgGzP
— Financial Times (@FT) October 26, 2026
Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom have indicated interest in buying up to $5 billion of the Class A shares combined. Meta’s release is careful to say those indications “are not binding agreements or commitments to purchase.”
The money is going in a circle, a little
Meta does not say what it will buy with the proceeds; the filing lists only “general corporate purposes.” But the reason for the raise is not a secret, and the companies offering to buy in are among the largest suppliers of the chips and networking gear that AI data centers run on. A supplier that invests in a customer, so the customer can keep placing orders, is a pattern that has drawn scrutiny across the AI industry this year.
The scale here keeps that concern modest. As Tech Funding News pointed out, $5 billion is less than 4 percent of Meta’s 2026 capital spending. The cornerstone interest looks more like a signal of confidence than a funding source.
The more consequential shift is who pays and what they get. Meta’s prospectus counts 2,214 million Class A shares and 342 million Class B shares outstanding at the end of September. Because each Class B share carries ten votes, that smaller class already holds roughly 60 percent of the voting power. The big open-market program is timed to begin once Class C trades, and any Class C share Meta sells adds capital and ownership without adding a single vote. That is the part I find hardest to look past: investors are being asked to fund the most expensive bet in the company’s history while having even less say over it.
The case for selling stock now
There is a strong argument that this is simply prudent finance. Meta already carried $83.7 billion of debt at the end of September, according to the prospectus. Borrowing another $95 billion would add fixed interest costs on top of a spending plan of $135 billion or more this year; equity has no repayment date, and the preferred shares convert into stock rather than coming due.
The structure also gives Meta options rather than obligations. The forward sales let it draw cash over a year, the at-the-market program has no signed agreement, and nothing forces Meta to sell all $60 billion if its cash flow catches up with its spending. Raising money while its shares are valued richly, rather than in a downturn, is what corporate finance textbooks recommend.
Non-voting stock is not new either. Investors who object to dual-class structures have had years to price that in, and many have bought the stock anyway because the business performed.
What it tells us about AI spending
All of that can be true, and the announcement still marks a turning point. Meta made $64.6 billion in revenue last quarter, up 26 percent, according to its release. If a company with that cash machine is lining up outside capital to keep building, the AI infrastructure race is no longer something even the richest companies are content to pay for out of earnings alone.
That matters for everyone downstream. The chip suppliers’ order books, the memory shortage pushing up device prices, and the fights over data center power all rest on the assumption that this spending continues. Meta has now told the market how it intends to keep going: by selling more of itself, increasingly to investors who will not get a vote on how the money is spent. I’d argue that whether they keep buying is the real test of the AI boom, and it is the number I will be watching most closely in 2027.
Related reading: Chip Stocks Slid for Six Straight Days. TSMC’s CEO Says AI Demand Still Exceeds Supply. · Memory Prices Are on Track to Rise 400%. Your Next Phone Is Paying for AI. · Micron Made $37.7 Billion Last Quarter. Taiwan’s First Chip Strike Is Over Who Gets a Share.
