Anthropic files for stock market IPO; Meta announces $95bn fundraising drive to pay for AI expansion – as it happened

Boom! Meta has just announced plans to raise up to $95bn to help pay for its massive AI ambitions.

The company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is kicking off a new fundraising drive to fund “its core business and emerging AI opportunities”.

First , Meta plans to raise $35bn through new “underwritten public offerings” – a sale of company stock.

This offering has some big name backers – Nvidia , AMD and Broadcom have all shown interest in taking part, Meta says. These ‘cornerstone investors’ could buy up to $5bn of the stock on offer.

Second , Meta also plans to launch a $60bn “at-the-market offering” – in which it will sell new common stock to investors at the going market rate in future.

The Silicon Valley giant says these plans will support “Meta’s continued investment in AI infrastructure and personal superintelligence”.

It also says it is “investing with financial discipline,” saying:

double quotation mark AI is creating significant opportunities for Meta across its core business and new products and services. Meta’s AI investments are already generating tangible returns through increased engagement, improved advertising performance and increased monetization. Meta is also pursuing new opportunities across personal superintelligence, consumer and business agents, enterprise products, and AI glasses.

The ‘at the market offering’ involves selling Meta’s new Class C Stock, which it announced last week it is creating. These Class C shares don’t have voting rights, so can be sold without diluting founder Mark Zuckerberg’s control of the company.

Internal forecasts last week showed that Meta needs to raise “hundreds of billions of dollars” over several years to fund its AI plans.