Meta Seeks $15 Billion From US Dollar Portion of Bond Offering

Meta Platforms Inc. is seeking to raise about $15 billion from the US dollar portion of a cross-border bond sale as tech giants brave investor skepticism to fund the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout.

The size of the offering could still grow depending on investor demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is planning to issue at least $20 billion in total with a debut euro-denominated note offering slated to be sold as soon as Wednesday, the people said, asking not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

Meta is selling the US dollar notes in five tranches, with maturities ranging from five to 30 years. Initial price talk on the longest tenor is a yield premium of about 2.5 percentage points above Treasuries, the people added.

The past few days have seen a surge in debt offerings by the firms at the forefront of the AI spending boom, even as money managers grow increasingly anxious about the unprecedented scale of their spending. A group of hyperscalers and so-called neocloud firms tracked by Bloomberg Intelligence is expected to invest almost $4.5 trillion over the next three years.

On Monday, Oracle Corp. sold $10 billion of bonds, while Alphabet Inc. raised €6 billion ($6.73 billion) through a euro-denominated note offering. Last week, Microsoft Corp. ended a nearly three-month drought in Big Tech bond issuance with a $25 billion transaction.

Meta last tapped the high-grade bond market in April, when it raised $25 billion through a deal that attracted $96 billion of investor demand at its peak. Appetite for AI-related offerings have since faded, with buyers demanding more concessions to take on the risk. Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley are running the new offering.

Meta and the banks involved in the transaction declined to comment.

Meta has recently launched Muse Wonder, a long-awaited new AI model with “frontier capabilities” that its leadership said is comparable with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic PBC’s Claude when it comes to coding or working through financial or legal questions.