Big Tech Secures AI Investment Funds with Massive Bond Issuance and Executive Share Sales

On May 4, U.S. social‐media company Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META) entered into its fifth amendment to the 2022 base indenture and issued six series of unsecured senior notes maturing between 2031 and 2066, raising a total of $25 billion (approximately KRW 34 trillion). Separately, on May 27, Chief Legal Officer Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of Meta common stock on the open market, generating roughly $1.27 million (about KRW 1.8 billion) in proceeds, while retaining holdings valued at approximately $680,000 (around KRW 1 billion). On April 27, Chief Operating Officer Javier Oliván conducted a preplanned transaction, divesting 1,555 shares held in his own name and through related entities and family trusts at $670.84 per share for total proceeds of about $1.04 million (roughly KRW 1.5 billion), yet he continues to maintain significant direct and indirect equity stakes.

In its first‐quarter earnings release on April 29, Meta reported revenue of $56.3 billion and strong profits, and raised its full‐year capital expenditure guidance to $125–145 billion to accelerate AI‐infrastructure investments—backed by the completed $25 billion bond issuance. At the same time, the company is pursuing cost‐structure optimization alongside large‐scale AI spending, announcing mid‐May workforce reductions of about 10% and canceling plans to fill some 6,000 open positions.

Meta—the U.S. Big Tech leader behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp—is a core player in the global digital‐advertising market. It has recently committed substantial resources to generative AI services such as Meta AI and Muse Spark, as well as to expanding its data‐center infrastructure. Across the Big Tech landscape, companies are competing with hundreds of billions of dollars in capital outlays for advertising, cloud computing and AI infrastructure, even as regulatory scrutiny, privacy concerns and youth‐protection litigation heighten industry‐wide volatility.