Quick overview

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META stock fell more than five percent on Friday after the Financial Times revealed that Meta might be able to raise tens of billions of dollars through a stock offering to finance its investments in artificial intelligence.

The social media company is considering a possible stock sale after rival Alphabet announced this week that it intends to raise $85 billion from selling equity, up from $80 billion, according to the FT.

Despite Alphabet’s recent success, investors’ concerns about excessive AI spending have caused the company’s stock to decline for the fourth week in a row. The FT pointed out that Meta hasn’t hired banks and might not issue new stock. A Meta representative referred to the report as “pure speculation.”

The spokesperson wrote in an email, “We’ve been clear that huge opportunities lie ahead in AI, and we’ll continue focusing on raising capital in the most flexible ways to support that.”. As they compete, Meta and Alphabet are investing record capital expenditures, just like other tech behemoths

In April, Meta raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to an astonishing $145 billion to fund the data centers and Nvidia chips needed for Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of “personal superintelligence.”

Meta used to carry almost no debt (less than $10 billion in 2022). It has already borrowed roughly $55 billion in recent months, including a massive $27 billion bond deal via a joint venture with private capital firm Blue Owl to fund a colossal data center project in Louisiana.

To free up money for AI, Meta halted its stock buyback program in late 2025 and recently laid off another 8,000 employees while freezing thousands of vacant roles.