Meta launched two share offerings worth about $35 billion to pay for its growing spending on AI.
The larger of the two is $22.5 billion of Class A common stock, the publicly traded share class, sold through forward sale agreements. In a forward sale, the price and size of the deal are agreed up front, but delivery and payment happen later. Meta delivers the shares and receives the money afterward, by November 19, 2027.
That structure matters. A forward sale gives Meta a committed buyer for a large block of stock without requiring all the shares to change hands at once. It also pushes the dilution, the thinning of each existing shareholder's slice of the company, toward the delivery date rather than the announcement.
The broader signal is about who pays for AI. The company said it is looking for new ways to fund the spending, and selling equity puts part of the bill in front of investors directly. Meta's own business has long been the main source of money for its bets, so turning to the stock market for a figure this size marks a shift in how the build-out gets financed.
For shareholders, the trade is plain. They get a company willing to keep spending on AI at scale, and they carry some of the cost of it in their ownership stake.