Meta is making a major investment in artificial intelligence, and it has devised a new type of stock to help finance that effort. On Wednesday, alongside the company's third-quarter earnings report, it emerged that Meta might issue non-voting shares—stock that carries no voting rights on corporate decisions—to help fund its AI ambitions. Meta confirmed the reports during its earnings call. Chief financial officer Susan Li stated that the company intends to "create a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be distributed to all existing shareholders through a stock dividend."

Li further explained that Meta "created this new class of shares with the purpose of creating a publicly traded non-voting stock usable for capital raising, employee compensation, acquisitions, and other general corporate purposes while preserving the voting power of existing Class A and B shareholders." She noted that the shares would allow the company to maintain its current "founder-led structure" while expanding its "funding tools and give us flexibility to invest behind the unprecedented momentum we're seeing across every part of our business, driven by AI."

Meta delivered strong results last quarter, surpassing Wall Street's expectations. The company generated $64 billion in revenue, a 26% increase from the prior year. However, its costs and expenses also climbed by 68% year-over-year. Reality Labs—the division behind Meta's AR glasses, VR headsets, and VR software—continues to lose money, though at a slower pace than before. In its earnings report, the company projected that the division's losses will decrease from 2025 levels to somewhere between $18 billion and $19 billion. Over the past year, Meta has made a significant push into AI, releasing several models including Muse Spark and Muse Glimmer earlier this year. In recent weeks, it introduced Muse Wonder and Muse Spark Open, an open-weight model whose underlying parameters are publicly available for outside developers to use and build upon. Meta also launched a coding agent for software developers called Muse Code. At this year's Meta Connect event, the company unveiled a new line of cute and cuddly avatars for its AI assistant, Meta Muse, in an effort to make its AI services more relatable—and meme-worthy. By all indications, these AI products are performing well. "In just a month and a half, more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up Muse personal agents," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during Wednesday's earnings call. "Growth continues to be strong, and we have been number one in the App Store almost every day."

"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 added, later claiming that the company expects to grow the product's appeal to eventually "serve billions of people." The company also acknowledged that certain storm clouds remain on the horizon in the form of ongoing regulatory and legal challenges. "We continue to monitor active legal and regulatory matters that could significantly impact our business and financial results," Li 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."