Meta to sell up to $95B in stock to finance AI infrastructure buildout

Meta Platforms Inc. plans to generate up to $95 billion by selling shares to fund its AI data center initiatives. The company announced today that the fundraising campaign will launch with a series of transactions totaling $35 billion. Of that amount, roughly two-thirds will be from common stock sales. Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom have shown interest in buying up to $5 billion worth of shares.

In addition to stocks, Meta will sell $12.5 billion in Series A depositary shares, which correspond to 1/20th of a mandatory convertible preferred share. These securities will convert into common stock on August 15, 2029. The funding round may increase if underwriters decide to buy more shares. Meta will have the option to sell an additional 37.5 million depositary shares and 3.375 billion common shares.

Following these deals, Meta plans to conduct a stock sale that could raise up to $60 billion through an at-the-market offering, which will be released incrementally over a long time period starting early next year. The funds will support the construction of four AI superclusters, with the largest, Hyperion in Louisiana, providing 5 gigawatts of computing capacity.

Meta will build 10 new power plants to meet Hyperion's energy needs. The company is collaborating with Blue Owl Capital and BlackRock for Hyperion, which is a joint venture between Meta and the asset manager. Meta's data centers power its Muse family of large language models, including the advanced Muse Wonder Full model, which outperforms competitors on coding benchmarks.

Meta aims to make its models more cost-efficient by reducing hardware requirements and improving inference infrastructure. The company also plans to optimize underutilized off-peak capacity for better efficiency.