By Kit Norton
Shares of Meta Platforms fell on Friday, with the Facebook parent reportedly looking to raise capital for booming artificial intelligence spending through a stock offering, following Alphabet's lead.
Meta executives, exploring paths to raise cash, are considering a stock offering to bring in tens of billions of dollars, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing three people familiar with the plans.
Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron's.
Meta stock fell 5.7% to $592.66 on Friday, and is on pace to end the week down 6.5%. For comparison, the S&P 500 declined 2.3% on Friday.
Among the other Magnificent Seven stocks, Tesla dropped 6.5% and Nvidia fell 6.3%. Alphabet dropped 1.2% while Microsoft moved 2.7% lower. Apple edged 0.4% lower and Amazon.com declined 2.3%.
The Roundhill Magnificent Seven exchange-traded fund fell 3.4%.
Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, are the biggest of the so-called hyperscalers, and Wall Street expects them to plow hundreds of billions of dollars into AI this year.
News of Meta executives reportedly considering a stock offering comes quickly after Google parent Alphabet outlined a plan to issue $80 billion in stock to fund its AI spending spree.
Alphabet earlier this week boosted the size of its stock sale to $84.75 billion. The success of the Google parent's stock sale bolstered internal talks at Meta for a similar strategy, according to the Financial Times.
Late Tuesday, Alphabet released details on its common stock and convertible preferred offerings. Alphabet sold about $18 billion of common stock, divided almost equally between its class A and C shares. That is up from a planned $15 billion.
It sold around $16.8 billion of mandatory convertible preferred stock with a 6.25% dividend yield, up from a planned $15 billion. Convertible preferred stock is a senior form of equity that is exchangeable for the company's common shares.
The company also is issuing $10 billion of common stock to Berkshire Hathaway and plans to sell $40 billion of stock in an "at-the-market" equity offering. That offering will start in the third quarter of this year and will likely will hit the market over a period of time.
Write to Kit Norton at kit.norton@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 05, 2026 15:53 ET (19:53 GMT)
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