Meta Platforms is weighing a share sale worth tens of billions of dollars, a move that would follow Alphabet’s record-shattering $85 billion equity raise and underscore just how expensive the AI arms race has become.
The potential offering, first reported by the Financial Times, would help Meta finance a capital expenditure budget that has ballooned to between $125 billion and $145 billion for 2026. That revised range is up from an earlier forecast of $115 billion to $135 billion, a $10 billion bump that tells you everything about how quickly AI infrastructure costs are escalating.
Investors were, to put it mildly, not thrilled. Meta shares dropped 5-7% on June 5, 2026, after the report surfaced.
Alphabet set the template, and it worked
Alphabet’s $85 billion raise, which closed in early June 2026, was initially targeted at $80 billion but got upsized thanks to oversubscription. That $85 billion figure makes it the largest corporate equity capital raise in history.
