Meta wants to pay for its broad AI buildout with a newly created class of stock
TechCrunch Lucas Ropek ● Covered by 5 sources
Meta is creating a new class of stock to help fund its AI push. It keeps founder control intact while giving the company more ways to raise cash.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Lucas Ropek — read the original for the full story.
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Meta is trying to do two things at once: pour more money into AI, and make sure that money doesn’t dilute the people already in charge. On Wednesday, as it reported third-quarter earnings, the company confirmed it plans to create a new class of non-voting capital stock and hand it to existing shareholders as a stock dividend. The shares would be publicly traded, but they would not come with voting rights.
Chief financial officer Susan Li said the new stock is meant for capital raising, employee compensation, acquisitions, and other general corporate purposes. The larger point is control. Meta says the structure lets it preserve the voting power of its existing Class A and B shareholders and keep its founder-led setup intact while widening its funding options for the AI spending spree.
The spending, at least for now, is backed by a quarter that looked strong on paper. Meta posted $64 billion in revenue, up 26% from a year earlier, and beat Wall Street’s expectations. But costs and expenses climbed 68% year over year, a reminder that this kind of AI expansion is not cheap.
Reality Labs is still a drag, though Meta said the losses there should shrink from 2025 levels to between $18 billion and $19 billion. That unit covers the company’s AR glasses, VR headsets, and VR software. Meanwhile, Meta keeps stacking up AI products: Muse Spark and Muse Glimmer earlier this year, then Muse Wonder and Muse Spark Open more recently, plus a coding agent called Muse Code. Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up Muse personal agents in a month and a half, and that the app has been near the top of the App Store almost every day.
The company is also dealing with the usual Meta-sized cloud of legal and regulatory trouble. Li said the company is watching active matters that could have a significant effect on its business and finances, including youth-related scrutiny in several markets and trials coming up in the U.S. The stock plan may help fund the AI push. It also neatly shows how Meta likes its future: aggressive, expensive, and still very much under the same hands.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Meta is basically trying to finance an AI arms race without giving up the steering wheel, which is very on brand. The non-voting stock move is a reminder that “growth” and “governance” are often only friends when nobody important is asking for control. Investors who love the AI story may shrug; everyone else gets the usual Silicon Valley message: please fund the ambition, and don’t mind the structure.
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