Meta Is Reportedly Weighing a Multibillion-Dollar Stock Sale to Fund Its AI Build-Out. Here's What It Could Mean for Shareholders.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) may soon pose a new question to its shareholders. Shares of the social media giant fell roughly 6% on Friday, June 5, after a Financial Times report said the company is weighing a sale of new stock -- potentially tens of billions of dollars' worth -- to help fund its surging investment in artificial intelligence (AI).

Meta quickly called the report "pure speculation," noting that it hasn't hired banks and continues to explore flexible ways to raise money. So, this is a possibility, not a plan. But it's one worth taking seriously, arriving just days after rival Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) priced a roughly $85 billion equity raise to fund its own AI ambitions.

The question for shareholders is less about whether Meta can fund its plans than about how it chooses to -- and selling new shares would be a very different lever than the ones it has used so far.

Image source: Getty Images.

The spending behind the speculation

Meta has ramped its spending sharply. Its 2025 capital expenditures, including finance leases, came to about $72 billion. Then, alongside its first-quarter results in late April, management raised its 2026 spending guidance to a range of $125 billion to $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion. The midpoint would be roughly double what the company spent last year.

And Meta is not alone: Combined 2026 spending by Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon is expected to top $720 billion.

What keeps pushing the figure higher is a need for computing power that outruns the company's own forecasts.

"Our experience so far has been that we have continued to underestimate our compute needs even as we have been ramping capacity significantly," said CFO Susan Li during Meta's first-quarter earnings call.

Also driving its investment are Meta's ambitious plans to build a personal superintelligence.

For now, the underlying business makes that spending look defensible. Revenue rose 33% year over year to $56.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026 -- the fastest growth since 2021 and an acceleration from 24% in the fourth quarter of 2025. And Meta's operating income climbed 30%.

But spending growth rates are outpacing revenue growth rates, putting a bigger spotlight on Meta's plans for raising capital. Indeed, first-quarter capital expenditures of about $20 billion substantially exceeded free cash flow of $12.4 billion. To keep funding the build-out, Meta has already leaned heavily on borrowing: Its long-term debt was about $59 billion as of March 31 -- up from a far smaller base just a few years ago. And in May, Meta completed another $25 billion senior notes offering.

Further, the company has paused its share repurchase program, which it has run since 2017.

"Share repurchase levels will vary from time to time for a lot of reasons, including whether we believe there are areas that have a greater near-term need for capital," said Li during the company's fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call earlier this year when she was asked why the company stopped buying back stock.

What a stock sale could mean for shareholders

A stock sale would be a notable shift for Meta. A company that was buying back its own shares one year could be issuing new ones the next.

Sure, selling stock raises cash without adding debt or interest payments, which is its appeal. The trade-off, however, is dilution: More shares outstanding means each existing share represents a slightly smaller slice of the company. Against Meta's market capitalization of about $1.5 trillion as of this writing, a raise in the tens of billions would be modest -- likely in the low single digits of dilution.

Timing, though, is where Meta's situation differs from Alphabet's. Alphabet sold its shares from a position of strength. Its stock has risen more than 115% over the past year, and its raise was reportedly oversubscribed and even upsized.

Meta, by contrast, would be selling after a weaker stretch, with its stock down about 11% year to date and trailing its largest tech peers. Issuing shares at a lower price means giving up more ownership for every dollar raised.

The flip side is that Alphabet's deal shows there is real appetite to help fund these AI build-outs -- an appetite that could work in Meta's favor if it does proceed.

Ultimately, it's unclear whether shareholders will be rewarded by an equity sale or even the spending itself. The payoff from Meta's enormous outlay is still unproven. The company's augmented- and virtual-reality unit continues to lose billions each quarter, and its AI model releases have reportedly had setbacks. Spending this aggressively also leaves less cushion if advertising softens at the wrong moment.

For now, this potential equity sale remains purely speculation rather than a decision. If the company does sell stock, the dilution itself looks manageable for a business this size. The more important thing to watch may be whether all this spending begins to translate into returns that justify it.

Daniel Sparks and his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.