What is Meta's non-voting stock class?
Meta plans to create a new class of stock that doesn’t come with voting rights, a move that gives the company a fresh way to pay for its heavy spending on artificial intelligence. The company confirmed the plan Wednesday on its third-quarter earnings call, a day after Semafor first reported that the stock was under consideration.
Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said Meta will “create a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be distributed to all existing shareholders through a stock dividend.” Li said the shares were designed to be a publicly traded tool that the company can use for “capital raising, employee compensation, acquisitions, and other general corporate purposes while preserving the voting power of existing Class A and B shareholders.”
Will the new shares change Meta's control?
The structure is meant to keep control where it sits today. Li said the new shares will let Meta maintain what she called its “founder-led structure,” while also giving the company more “funding tools” to “invest behind the unprecedented momentum we’re seeing across every part of our business, driven by AI.”
How is Meta's AI spending affecting its finances?
The financial backdrop is strong, at least on the top line. Meta reported $64 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 26% jump from a year earlier. Its costs and expenses rose too, climbing 68% year over year, a sign of how quickly the company is spending as it builds out its AI capacity.
Reality Labs, the division that houses Meta’s augmented reality glasses, virtual reality headsets and VR software, is still losing money. The company said it expects those losses to shrink from 2025 levels to between $18 billion and $19 billion. The unit has been a long-running drain on profits, and Meta’s latest projection suggests the red ink is narrowing rather than disappearing.
The AI push has been fast-moving over the past year. Meta has released several models, including Muse Spark and Muse Glimmer earlier this year. In recent weeks it added Muse Wonder and Muse Spark Open, an open-weight model whose underlying parameters are publicly available for outsiders to use and build on. The company also launched Muse Code, a coding agent aimed at software developers.
Meta also showed off a more playful side of its AI assistant at its Meta Connect event this year, unveiling a new line of cute and cuddly avatars for Meta Muse. The company said the characters were meant to make its AI services more relatable, and, as it turned out, more meme-able.
Zuckerberg told analysts that the early numbers look encouraging. “In just a month and a half, more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up Muse personal agents,” he said. “Growth continues to be strong, and we have been number one in the App Store almost every day.”
He said the company is now moving from building to scaling. “Now that Muse has clear product-market fit, we are entering a new phase and a more operational phase that is focused on scaling it,” Zuckerberg said. He added that Meta expects to grow the product’s appeal until it can “serve billions of people.”
Not every issue on the horizon is technical. Li warned investors that legal and regulatory matters could materially affect the business. “We continue to monitor active legal and regulatory matters that could significantly impact our business and financial results,” she said. “For example, we continue to see scrutiny on youth-related issues in several markets, and have a number of youth-related trials scheduled in the coming months in the United States.”
Este artículo fue escrito con la asistencia de IA.
News Factory APP - noticias agénticas para impulsar tu SEO y AEO.