Meta Platforms is reportedly exploring a potential equity raise worth tens of billions of dollars, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg hunts for fresh capital to fund sweeping AI aspirations.

Financial Times (FT) reported the social media giant’s executives are exploring creative ways to boost funds for AI-related capital expenditure.

The publication stated CFO Susan Li is leading the discussions alongside Dina Powell McCormick, who moved from Meta’s board in January to take on the newly created role of president, with a specific focus on AI infrastructure financing and longer-term planning.

In its Q1 earnings report released in April, Meta raised its 2026 capex guidance range from $115 billion-$135 billion to $125 billion-$145 billion.

Zuckerberg is focused on developing so-called superintelligence which he believes will help humanity accelerate its rate of progress.

A person familiar with the discussions told FT it is premature to say if Meta has decided anything, but all financing options are still on the table.

A representative for Meta told Mobile World Live FT’s reporting “is pure speculation”.

“We’ve been clear that huge opportunities lie ahead in AI, and we’ll continue focusing on raising capital in the most flexible ways to support that.”

The potential offering comes as the US equity markets are experiencing a historic surge of activity. Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to raise as much as $86 billion in an IPO next week, while Anthropic confidentially filed for a listing and OpenAI is also preparing to go public.

The post Meta eyes fundraising to pay for AI drive appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Investigation reveals more than 4.4 million people live in ‘news deserts’ that lack dedicated local reporting

Local social media groups are fuelling misinformation in areas with no reliable sources of news, according to an investigation that reveals the scale of fake news flowing to vulnerable communities across Britain.

Misinformation was nearly three times more common in areas with little or no recognised local journalism, according to a study of tens of thousands of posts seen by the Guardian. Immigration and Islamophobia were the most common topics of misinformation across Facebook and X.

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© Photograph: Joel Goodman

© Photograph: Joel Goodman

© Photograph: Joel Goodman

Meta’s former head of global affairs says executives pivoted right in some cases for ‘rather more self-interested’ reasons

Silicon Valley companies including Meta have decided to embrace Maga politics, some for “rather more self-interested” reasons, the former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said.

Clegg, who spent nearly seven years at Meta as the head of global affairs, told The Rest is Money podcast that it felt like “a very good time for me to move on” when he left the company in March 2025, three months into the second Trump administration.

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© Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images

In September 2021, The Wall Street Journal published the Facebook Files, a series of reports based on internal documents from the tech company that, among other things, showed its executives were aware of the harms Instagram and Facebook were causing young people. It was a bombshell. It triggered the biggest reputational crisis for Mark Zuckerberg’s company, which weeks later rebranded as Meta. The person behind it was engineer Frances Haugen, 42, who left her post at Facebook carrying 21,000 internal documents. The U.S. Senate summoned her to testify, and investigations were opened into her revelations.

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A friend is upset because you didn’t “like” a photo from her last trip, but the truth is you haven’t even had a chance to see it. Instead of displaying it on your feed, Instagram prioritized showing you ads for food.

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© NurPhoto (NurPhoto via Getty Images)

TikTok executives decided not to disable notifications during school hours, ignoring recommendations from their own safety team, and paid millions of dollars to parents’ and teachers’ associations to promote the social network in schools. Snapchat sent alerts to teenagers while they were in class urging them to share what was happening in the classroom. Google executives knew that YouTube was recommending videos to students during the school day that were unrelated to their lessons. Meta paid “teen ambassadors” to promote Instagram and hand out gifts to their classmates.

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Meta Platforms unveiled an AI agent designed to help businesses carry out day-to-day tasks, as the social media giant looks to raise competition in the enterprise arena.

Meta Business Agent is an AI-powered tool designed to let any business, from a one-person shop to a global enterprise, respond to customers around the clock without missing a beat.

It also positions the company to better rival OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the enterprise AI market.

More than a million businesses are already using some version of the agent on WhatsApp and Messenger, but yesterday (3 June) Meta started offering it globally to businesses of all sizes.

Meta explained Business Agent can be setup up in minutes or plugged directly into an existing enterprise infrastructure.

The agent can handle conversations in business customers’ local languages and tone from the first day.

It can answer business-specific questions, recommend products from a catalogue, book appointments, qualify leads, and even close sales. When a situation calls for a human touch, users can decide exactly when a team member needs to step in.

The expansion to Instagram is also live and getting started is free. Meta stated paid subscription tiers are coming in the months ahead, with options built to fit businesses of every size.

Meta is positioning the agent as more than just a chatbot. The agent doubles as a daily partner, capable of delivering morning briefings which catch businesses up on overnight conversations while surfacing insights from customer threads.

It is rolling out the agent to a select group of businesses on WhatsApp Business, Instagram Pro, Messenger, and Meta Business Suite, with a waitlist open for others.

For businesses that want deeper customisation, Meta is also launching the Business Agent Platform, an enterprise-grade infrastructure layer which connects to hundreds of third-party systems including Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee, giving the agent the ability to take real action on a business’ behalf.

The social media giant is also making it easier for people to discover businesses powered by a Meta Business Agent directly on WhatsApp.

Soon, people on WhatsApp will be able to find businesses by searching a name or sharing a contact card in a chat, which means every new customer who reaches out gets a helpful response from the start.

The post Meta takes aim at enterprise with new agent appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Meta says it has resolved an issue that allowed hackers to trick its AI assistant into granting access to other users' accounts, according to media reports.

Meta says it has resolved an issue that allowed hackers to trick its AI assistant into granting access to other users' accounts, according to media reports.

Tech giants and nations stepped up measures to protect young users online as Poland moved to ban mobile phones in primary schools and Meta Platforms separately beefed up teen content controls globally.

Poland’s proposed ban, due to take effect on 1 September 2026, will apply to children aged 7 to 15 on school premises, including during breaks. According to Reuters, the proposed bill will also give schools a legal basis to create storage deposits for handsets.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the restriction aims to give parents and teachers more control over pupils’ device use. “We propose a ban on cell phone use in primary schools during lessons and breaks,” he said, adding, “this is not a perfect solution, we have no illusions about that, but we must address this serious problem, which is addiction to phones and the internet”.

Another bill proposed by Poland’s minister for digital affairs also imposes new obligations on pornography websites to restrict access by children.

Poland’s proposals come as social media platforms face mounting scrutiny over child safety across the globe.

Meta moves
Earlier today (2 June), Meta announced it is expanding its 13+ content settings for teen accounts on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger globally. The controls were initially launched in select countries in October last year and are designed to filter out content deemed inappropriate for underage users as the default for teenagers’ accounts.

A more restrictive “limited content” setting will also be made available on Facebook and Messenger later this year. In addition, Meta’s Instagram platform is also testing a feature to prevent teenage users from repeatedly seeing certain types of content to promote a more balanced social media feed.

In December, Australia became the world’s first country to ban social media for under-16s, while countries including the UK, Denmark, Greece, France, Malaysia, Norway and Spain are all weighing or advancing restrictions.

The post Poland plots phone school ban; Meta expands teen controls appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Meta Platforms reportedly acknowledged its controversial employee surveillance programme captures data from employees outside the US, raising fresh legal questions in Europe.

Reuters reported internal documentation it reviewed showed the company’s Model Capability Initiative (MCI) does capture data outside of the US.

MCI was introduced last month as a tool to record how US-based employees interact with their work computers by tracking mouse movements, clicks and navigation patterns across more than 200 apps and websites.

The goal of MCI is to use the employee-generated data to train AI agents capable of performing coding and white-collar tasks.

Meta told staff the programme is confined to US devices and stated safeguards are in place to protect sensitive information.

The news agency noted Meta acknowledged in a question-and-answer document provided to employees MCI will capture the contents of any emails or direct messages sent to US personnel, regardless of the sender’s ⁠location.

Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold told Reuters the company notified non-US employees the tool was running on the machines of US-based colleagues they might correspond with, describing the step as one of transparency.

A representative for Meta told Mobile World Live: “We’ve been clear that this tool is for US-based personnel only, and in the interest of transparency, we notified non-US employees that it was deployed on the computers of US colleagues they may email or chat with in the normal course of business.”

“We carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment of this tool, and we are committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations.” 

New regulatory exposure
Reuters stated the disclosure introduces new regulatory exposure in Europe, where technology companies are already fighting a series of heated legal battles over data collection.

Under the EU’s GDPR rules, the news site explained companies must establish a clear legal basis for processing personal data, disclose what is being collected and satisfy strict conditions around sensitive categories of information.

Kleanthi Sardeli, a legal expert at privacy advocacy group NOYB, told the news site even limited or incidental capture of EU employee data could put Meta in breach of GDPR rules.

A key question, she said, is whether data originally gathered for work communications can lawfully be repurposed to train an AI model.

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