Meta plans to create a new class of non-voting stock as it expands its artificial intelligence business. The shares will go to existing shareholders through a stock dividend and could later give the company another way to raise capital while retaining its current voting structure.
A new way to raise capital
Meta confirmed the plan during its third-quarter earnings call, after Semafor reported that the company might issue non-voting shares. The new stock will not give its owners a vote on company decisions.
Chief financial officer Susan Li said the publicly traded shares could be used for capital raising, employee compensation, acquisitions and other general corporate purposes. Distributing them as a stock dividend means existing shareholders would receive the new class of stock.
Li said the structure is designed to preserve the voting power of existing Class A and B shareholders. She described it as a way to maintain Meta’s “founder-led structure” while expanding the company’s funding tools.
In practical terms, Meta is creating a potential source of financing that does not change who holds voting influence. The company says the added flexibility would help it invest behind momentum across its business, which it attributes to AI.
AI ambitions meet rising costs
The plan comes as Meta pursues a broad AI buildout. Its third-quarter results were strong, with revenue of $64 billion, up 26% from a year earlier and above Wall Street expectations. At the same time, costs and expenses increased 68% year over year.
Those figures show the scale of the investment challenge: revenue is growing, but spending is growing faster. The new shares could provide an additional financing option as Meta develops products and infrastructure, though the company did not specify how much it might raise or when it might use the stock for that purpose.
Meta’s investments extend beyond AI. Reality Labs, which is responsible for its AR glasses, VR headsets and VR software, continues to lose money. The company expects the division’s losses to fall from 2025 levels to between $18 billion and $19 billion.
Products are gaining users
Meta has released several AI models, including Muse Spark and Muse Glimmer earlier this year. More recently, it added Muse Wonder and Muse Spark Open, an open-weight model that makes its underlying parameters publicly available for outsiders to use and build on.
The company has also launched Muse Code, a coding agent for software developers, and introduced a new line of avatars for its Meta Muse AI assistant at Meta Connect. Together, these efforts show Meta working across models, developer tools and consumer-facing services.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had set up Muse personal agents in a month and a half. He said growth remained strong and that the product had been number one in the App Store almost every day.
Zuckerberg said Meta sees clear product-market fit for Muse and is moving into a phase focused on scaling it. He also said the company expects the product’s appeal eventually to “serve billions of people.” That is an ambition, rather than a result already achieved.
Legal matters remain a concern
Meta’s funding plans come alongside risks that could affect its business and financial results. Li said the company is monitoring active legal and regulatory matters, including scrutiny of youth-related issues in several markets.
She also said a number of youth-related trials were scheduled in the coming months in the United States. The earnings call did not detail how those matters might affect the stock plan or the company’s investment decisions.
For now, the proposed non-voting stock gives Meta another tool to support its corporate needs while keeping existing Class A and B voting power intact. How significant that tool becomes will depend on whether and how the company uses the shares to finance its AI ambitions.