{"id":262637,"date":"2025-10-31T10:04:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T10:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262637\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T10:04:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T10:04:27","slug":"meta-readies-25bn-bond-sale-as-soaring-ai-costs-trigger-stock-sell-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262637\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta readies $25bn bond sale as soaring AI costs trigger stock sell-off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Meta is planning to raise $25bn from a bond sale to help it pay for soaring artificial intelligence costs, even as the Big Tech group\u2019s shares suffered one of their worst days ever over concerns that its spending is too high.<\/p>\n

The social media group had hired Citigroup and Morgan Stanley to raise up to $25bn in debt, ranging from five to 40 years in maturity, in what would be one of the biggest bond sales of the year, according to two people close to the matter. <\/p>\n

It comes a day after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg warned<\/a> that the US tech group would spend even more aggressively as part of an arms race to build the data centres and infrastructure powering the AI boom. <\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s shares closed 11.3 per cent lower on Thursday afternoon as investors fretted over the huge outlay. The move wiped almost $208bn from its valuation \u2014 its second biggest one-day loss.<\/p>\n

\"Bar<\/p>\n

The bond sale underscores how technology giants are increasingly turning to the debt markets as they spend record sums to build AI infrastructure<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Meta raised $27bn<\/a> of private debt from credit providers, including Pimco and Apollo, in recent months to fund construction of its huge \u201cHyperion\u201d data centre in Louisiana. Oracle sold $18bn of bonds in September.<\/p>\n

Large tech companies are projected to invest $400bn on AI infrastructure this year, including buying computer chips and building data centres. On Wednesday, Meta, Microsoft and Google\u2019s parent Alphabet all disclosed larger than expected spending plans in the current quarter.<\/p>\n

The social media company said capex could hit $72bn by the end of the year and that spending growth would be \u201cnotably larger\u201d in 2026, implying a number far in excess of an earlier forecast for $105bn.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg defended huge spending on infrastructure for Meta\u2019s own use. He told analysts on Wednesday that it was \u201cthe right strategy to aggressively frontload building capacity\u201d as part of the tech group\u2019s bid to be the first to build artificial superintelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re tripling down on what they believe in,\u201d said Youssef Squali, head of internet and media equity research at Truist Securities. \u201cYou don\u2019t have as much as $110bn capex expectations plus all those off balance sheet financings if you don\u2019t believe that in the addressable market over time you\u2019re\u00a0going to be number one, two or three.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that he was bullish on Meta despite the heavy spending given recent increases in user growth and engagement, alongside continued momentum in the advertising business.<\/p>\n

At a recent dinner with US President Donald Trump, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend $600bn on US data centres and AI infrastructure through to the end of 2028.<\/p>\n

Meta, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. The bond sale was first reported by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-262637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}